


Lost Boys |AU|

by Airiamurillo



Category: Hollywood Undead (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Friendship, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, School
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2019-05-30 07:13:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 56,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15091754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Airiamurillo/pseuds/Airiamurillo
Summary: Everyone wants to find themselves, they want to know who they are and where they stand in the big world. If you are in the Lost Boys home in Los Angeles it could be even harder as you have to constantly fight to get yourself noticed. Surrounded by only boys 24/7 means they are going to experiment right??





	1. Chapter 1

Hey guys, new story which me and the muffin roleplayed first to kinda of get the idea of how we are going to plan it all out and how many chapters we will do and that kinda of thing. This is the second time I have started this chapter, I got about three pages in then lost all my work so hoping I don’t lose this too.

This is an alternative universe and please don’t forget that if you feel like I have gotten some facts about the boys wrong, I will be changing ages to teenagers and switching the age order around and the heights to suit the story. So here are the guys and the ages they are at the start of this story:

Aron Erlichman- 18 years old

George Ragan- 17 years old

Jorel Decker- 17 years old

Jordon Terrell- 16 years old

Matthew Busek- 16 years old

Dylan Alvarez-15 years old

Daniel Murillo- 14 years old

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jorel p.o.v

I am currently in one of the music rooms at the boy’s home, waiting for the rest of my friends to get here so we can mess around. I am only 17 and I have been here since I was two, some of my friends like George who is also 17 have been here since they were born and others like Matt have only been here for a few years. Aron is 18 and like George he has been here all his life and he is about to leave soon. Jordon is 16 like Matt and we have a few more years here I think because no family wants us. Dylan is currently the baby of the group because he is only 15 and he’s been here since he was 3.

Here is Los Angele’s home for Lost Boys, a fancy name for an all-male orphanage and an adoption center. Some of us have never really seen girls apart from when we go to school because they don’t have the capabilities to teach us here even though they would like too, and we only have a couple of female social workers here. The most popular method of being brought here is being dumped on the doorstep when you are a new-born or dumped when you are younger than the age of five. Other people like Matt get brought here if they lose their parents and no one wants to take them in. I have heard of a few who were brought in because they were abused but we hardly see them anymore.

I decide to go and look for Jordon because he usually is the first here unless he is still sleeping or something. When I walk into his room, I noticed there is now a bunkbed and the bottom bunk is more like a sleeping den. Jordon is helping Caleb set it all up on the bottom for someone else because all his stuff is on the top bunk. “What’s going on?” I ask, feeling curious. We really need to have a new guy in our group to change it up a little and Aron is starting to get on everyone’s nerves. “We are getting a new guy in tomorrow and we decided that Jordon is going to share with him and that you guys are going to help him settle in,” Caleb replies, and I help them set up the bottom bunk with what they give all new guys.

Regardless of how old you are when you first arrive it is the home’s policy to provide you with a stuffed animal. It could bring comfort and give them an item which would help them associate it with the good times they may have here or if they get adopted where they came from. This new guy is getting a little stuffed fox, I have a wolf and Jordon got a jaguar. The others got one too; I can’t remember what they have though. “So, what do you know about this new guy that we can know?” Jordon asks, a fair question considering they will be spending at least two years sharing a room.

“He is a year younger than Dylan; he’s got brown hair and brown eyes. He’s quite short and his personality seems to be shy so far. His name is Danny and he is a local boy, he has some Costa Rican heritage though, so he might speak Spanish around you guys without meaning to. He will definitely need your help because he is coming from probably one of the worst cases of child abuse I have ever seen in my entire career and you know how long I have been doing this for now,” Caleb answers and I immediately feel sorry for Danny. Caleb has been working here for the past 30 or 40 years now so he would have seen some stuff.

So, Danny is 14 which makes him just the right age to be starting high school, this will be good, so we will all go to the same high school together and even when us older kids leave, we can still hang around with them for the 4 years it will take before we are all done with high school. I think Dylan is in the same grade as him since he failed it last year, so he must redo it, so Danny will have a friend for his classes when they have the same ones. “I am going to visit Danny later on, so I will tell him some things about you guys, so he knows who he is going to be helped by. I know right now Aron will not do anything, but he will be moved out by the end of the year. I also know that you boys will do me proud and help this kid,” Caleb tells us, and we nod.

When Caleb left the room, we decide to finish off making Danny’s bed before joining the others in the music room. Aron wasn’t there because he was with his nine lives friends and doing whatever he wants to do. “Hey, I was wondering where you guys disappeared to,” George says when he sees us enter the room. “Hey, we were working on a slight change to my room,” Jordon answered, and he picked up and acoustic guitar and started strumming on it. The guys immediately became more interested when Jordon said that, but he was more concentrated on the guitar. “We are getting a new guy in the group tomorrow,” I explain, wondering if Jordon was going to elaborate on this or make me tell them.

“Yeah, he is called Danny. He is sharing my room and he is gonna need us a lot,” Jordon adds when he pauses from his strumming session. Dylan and Matt were also very interested. “What do you mean he is going to need us a lot?” Matt asks and Dylan nods. “Danny is 14 so he is younger than Dylan. From what Caleb has told us he is coming from the worst case of child abuse that he has seen in his career,” Jordon explains and when they look to me and tilt their heads to question whether or not it’s true and all I can do is nod. “Caleb might tell you this when you see him next, but you’d already know it from us and we were also told he might speak Spanish to us without meaning to,” I add.

“Damn, he does need our help if Caleb says it’s the worst case he has seen. Forty years of being a child social worker does mean he has seen a lot of bad shit going on in families,” George says, also feeling sorry for the new guy who we haven’t met yet. I knew he was going to help me and Jordon take care of the little guy, George has always been labelled the father figure in the group. He will be a big help in making Danny feel safe while he is with us. “Well if he needs our help then we will help him,” Dylan says, and we did a little group fist bump. “You would be in the same classes as him at school, wouldn’t you? You failed that year,” Matt asks Dylan who nods, he isn’t that fussed about failing last year then.

“Yeah, maybe once he knows he is going with someone he will get to know a bit will make school better for him,” Dylan says, if Danny had someone easily recognisable as a friend it would help him settle in, I think. Then again, I don’t think Danny is going to be starting school on Monday anyway since he will have the week to settle in and get used to being around people. I think Danny might be in a hospital at the moment because if a child or teen gets removed from an abuse situation unless they need medical treatment then they are brought here straight away. “It’s a shame Aron will have no interest in the poor dude. It might change Aron for the better to have a younger guy to mentor and influence,” George says.

“Aron is too busy to even care about us anymore George. He isn’t going to care about the new guy or if he does it will be to influencing him to make the wrong decisions and do the wrong things,” Matthew says. It seemed like he was being an asshole but unfortunately he is telling the truth. Aron doesn’t care about anyone but himself and one day the nine lives group will learn that. It will be enough for Danny himself that there will be 5 other people around to look after him so having that toxic asshole around won’t be that helpful. “Yeah, Danny doesn’t need that asshole anyways. He has all of us,” I tell them, and they nodded in agreement. We know already we will be better help for the poor kid.

Caleb walked in with a stack of papers. “Hey boys, I am sure Jordon and Jorel have already told you about the new boy I plan to introduce to your group tomorrow. I just want to make sure I have your permission to take some pictures of you when I go to see him in a little while, so I can start getting him used to being around you. Then you won’t be total strangers to him when you are introduced tomorrow,” he tells us, and we are eager to sign the papers because we wanted to help Danny out which might be a bit weird considering we are not the best-behaved students in the school or kids in the home. He said he would try and bring a picture back with him of Danny and some information on him.

This is going to help us get to know him a little better and know what to expect when we meet him tomorrow for the first time. We want a better idea on his personality and how he can help him the best. It is going to take a while for him to warm up to and to be able to trust us. If he has gone through the worst abuse like Caleb has said then he is going to struggle to adapt to being in a house with people caring for him twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week. He leaves again, and we just mess around with the guitars for a while. We will wait for him to come back before we talk about Danny again. We were in the middle of writing songs, so we wanted to continue with that while Aron is gone.

He wanted to make songs, but it was apparent after we planned a whole album out that he would rather go with nine lives to make worse songs which was fine by us. We could make better songs without him, so it made no difference to our writing abilities and our ability to make chords fit together to make a track. I was looking at George who was working on a song called SCAVA and the lyrics were quite deep and meaningful like our swan songs album wants to be. I just wanted to make music for fun for now, maybe when we are a bit older we can start looking for record labels and make something out of our idea. Maybe we can get Danny to join in with our idea once we get to know him a little better.

“Hey, maybe Danny can join our band? He might be a good singer,” Jordon suggests after we had been practising for about half an hour. We had all stopped for a break, so we could get a snack and a drink. “Maybe, we would have to get to know him a little better first though. He might not know if he wants to join the band. We will see how he does,” George says, being the sensible one in the situation. That was also what I was thinking of. I have to make sure Danny is comfortable being around us first before we even try and push him into talking about joining the band. He might not even want to join the band, or even hang out with us after the initial settling in period has passed.

“Yeah, it was just a suggestion because we might find that he is musically gifted or something. Maybe if we find something really positive to focus on, then he will be able to adjust more easily and open up,” Jordon says, bringing up a point I hadn’t even considered. We have been told multiple times that we are wiser beyond our years and this goes to prove it. Distractions might be a good tactic in helping Danny recover. “Good suggestion Jordon, we will just have to see what happens when Danny arrives tomorrow,” Dylan says. Either way I was planning on helping make the situation as pleasant as possible for Danny. I think the others will too because that’s why we have been chosen to look after him.

“That’s good, if we all keep this attitude then we can really help someone,” Matt says, the fact that Danny has been through hell makes us even more determined to change his life for the better. We have all been through some kind of hell or loss which has made us arrive here, but I don’t think any of us can say we have ever been abused by our parents. Jordon lost both of his parents, Matt and the rest of us got left here because our parents could not handle us. They couldn’t afford to keep me at home, so they said it was better for me to come here and then be adopted into a family who were better able to look after me with finances. I was only 10 at the time and I didn’t care, their love was enough for me.

I don’t resent them for what they have decided to do. If they decided that it was in my best interests to be here, then I don’t feel anger towards them. At the end of the day they had to make a decision which would benefit me the most and they picked this one. It doesn’t stop me from going back to them at 18 if I want to. I have talked to them a couple of times and they said I could come back when I turned eighteen and I left the place unless I can own a house by that time. I love that I still have a family and I do not take it for granted one bit. I know the rest of my group do not have that luxury to have a family who cares about them as much as I do, but at the same time I wish they could take me back.

We messed around until lunch time when one of the care workers came and told us we had to go and make lunch. They observe our mealtimes and don’t really cook for the teens for lunch. They only cook for dinner time for everyone since we should know how to make a sandwich. They make us dinner to make sure that everyone gets at least one meal a day. I think they will be monitoring Danny closely though since he might have issues eating. We weren’t going to tell anyone else that we were getting a new member to the group, it will be obvious enough tomorrow when he arrives. I was glad it was a Saturday and we have some time to get to know him before we have school on Monday.

They said he probably won’t be going to school for the first couple of weeks just, so he can adjust to the new life he is going to be living. Caleb came back at around half past 3 in the afternoon. We are all in Jordon’s room and we left George in peace in the corner to read Paradise Lost for the fifth time or something like that. I never bothered counting. “Hey boys,” Caleb says, and we all say hi back, even George who was reading. Caleb noticed that George was reading and sat down. “Hey George, do you think you would mind teaching Danny how to read? As far as we can tell he has Dyslexia and he has warmed up to me a lot, so he trusts me with things,” Caleb asks, and George did put down his book.

“Sure, I don’t mind teaching him. I’ll wait until he starts warming up to me first. Don’t want to force the kid, I think I might look a little intimidating to him,” George says, he is a big muscly guy. You could tell he works out a lot, but he is a gentle giant. That is how I would describe him anyway. I could see Caleb was happy with how willing we are already to help someone we haven’t even met yet. He passed me a picture, I saw a pale young teen with brown eyes and brown hair. He looked afraid, but that was probably taken a few days ago because I saw the bruises on his face. I passed it to Dylan next. “I’m glad. The picture I have passed around is the only one I have of Danny. He has done quite well today though. I think he will trust you guys pretty soon,” he says.

I was glad that he was doing well with Caleb and he was trusting the care worker. Caleb is an incredible guy and does everything that he can to help children in his care and Danny is not going to be an exception to this. “This does look like a bad case, you can even see a little bit of bruising down the neck,” George says when he hands the picture back to Caleb. “Yeah, like I told Jorel and Jordon earlier today it has been the worse case of abuse I have seen in my career. Danny is going to take a long time to heal and to start trusting people since he has been locked in a tiny bedroom for the last fourteen years. That’s also why we suspect he might be dyslexic. He can tell me some words, but he has been showing the signs of having it,” Caleb says.

I felt sorry for Danny, it must be horrible to be in a tiny room on your own for all of your life and the only interaction you get with someone is someone coming in just to hurt you and to say nasty things to you. “Yeah, we will take our time building trust with him since it is going to be hard for him to adjust to what is going on around him,” Matt says, that was something we are all going to be doing. We will let him come to us and show him that we will care for him and we will support him. “I knew you boys would make me proud,” Caleb tells us, and we smile. We are not going to let him down and we are going to make him even prouder than he is now. I can’t wait to meet Danny in person. He is quite an adorable kid.

“When I was talking to him today, I introduced him to you guys and I told him that you are basically going to be like his big brothers and you would be here to support him no matter what. He seems to be interested in your passion for music and the nurses have told me that they get him to calm down with music,” Caleb tells us, which is great for us. I have now thought of a way to help him, we can play our guitars and teach him how to play too. “That’s cool, we don’t mind being brothers to him and we could help him out with music,” I say, I felt a little bad speaking for everyone, but they seemed to agree with me, so it didn’t feel too bad. “Yeah Jorel is right, it will be cool to have another little brother on board,” George says, and I smiled. Everyone here will be Danny’s big brother, even Dylan who is only a year older.

We talked more about Danny’s personality and things like that. Danny is quiet and shy, but when you get to know him a little better he can be quite giggly and friendly to people. He will have a lot of trust issues, but we will work through with him and these issues will only be temporary. He’s going to have a lot of cuddles and he will have a lot of people looking out for him from now on. He is going to have friends and brothers for the rest of his life. Aron walked in around ten minutes after Caleb left and George had gone back to reading peacefully in the corner. Even though I think it is going to be interrupted quite badly in a moment. Caleb has been paying more attention to us than he has some of the rest of the children since he is helping us get Danny prepped for tomorrow.

I wanted to leave, the amount of arguments that happen now because of Aron are too much for me to deal with. He wants all the attention and cannot stand it if someone else gets even the slightest bit more praise than he does. “Why has Caleb been paying more attention to you dweebs?” Aron asks, and I watch Georg hold himself back from punching Aron. He stopped reading his book because he heard Aron walk in and knew it would be futile to read. “because it has nothing to do with you, if Caleb wanted you to know then he would have included you in the three times that he has come to speak to us today,” Matt says. He was keeping the anger and frustration back I could tell from here.

“Matt’s right Aron, if Caleb wanted you to know why he was speaking to us then he would have included you in the conversation, but he didn’t so go away,” Dylan says, we wanted him to go away. We don’t like him anymore. Aron bickered some more but then saw one of his nine lives mates waiting for him and he walked off to be with him. I felt glad that he left so soon since I didn’t want to fight with Aron any longer today at least. I don’t even want to fight with Aron tomorrow. The last thing we need is to frighten Danny off with all the shouting Aron can do when he gets into an argument with someone. Danny is going to be frightened enough with the new things he will experience he doesn’t need added upset.

Dinner was uneventful as usual, the only things that happened tonight happen every night. Aron was being a disruptive piece of shit like usual. George and I were tasked with feeding the toddlers. They loved it and they idolised us, so they were well behaved the entire time that we were feeding them. I knew little Luke was going to end up with half on his dinner on his face, but that was okay I would be able to clean him up. It is not the end of the world to have some food on your face. Luke looked at me with his yogurt before he smeared it all over his face. He giggled at me and I just let it slide since he was very adorable. “Luke do you just want Jorel to bath you?” George asks, for some reason Luke prefers me to bath him over anyone else.

“Jay jay do bath time!” Luke cheers and I smile, that is what he wanted all along and I am happy to give it to him. “Okay Luke, I will bath you in a little while okay,” I tell him, and he smiled at me. He cheered again, and I lifted him out of the high chair when he was finished. Since I had already eaten my dinner I decided since he was the only tot that needed bathing that I would do it now and get it out of the way before the care workers take the tots to bed in an hours’ time. Luke loved me bathing him and then cuddling him afterwards. I am sure he believes I am actually his brother or something. I know I am not, but he doesn’t know that since he is only two. He doesn’t know what a family is bless his little heart.

I feel sorry for him and a lot of the other children here. They might never know what a family is. Luke has a bit of luck on his side, he is only two so more people are likely to adopt him when they come looking for a new addition to add to their family. It is more likely for Luke to be adopted then I am since I am 17 now, a year away from being a legal adult in most countries. I would have to move out of here once I leave school next year too. It’s going to be the same for George too, we would move into a house together hopefully then wait for the others to join us. Danny will be the last one to leave here, but we will still be here for him no matter what. I share a room with George so once all the little ones have gone to bed we all meet up in there.

“What books are you going to start Danny on when that does happen?” Jordon asks George while we relax. We are almost buzzing with excitement about tomorrow. “Probably the very basic books like little children ones. I have been thinking that I should do it on a one to one basis because that would be best for him and I will be reassuring him that it isn’t embarrassing that he will be reading at that level for a small while,” George says, I could tell he had put a lot of thought into that. When he does get round to teaching Danny how to read properly we are going to respect his wish to do it on a one to one basis and we can let him use either this room or Danny and Jordon’s room to teach him. Maybe when he has more confidence then we can help him read to the little ones to build his confidence further.

We chatted the evening away until Caleb came in and told us to all go to bed since we would have a busy day tomorrow and Danny was arriving at around 1 pm if the morning rounds at the hospital go well. They just had a few little issues that were going to be solved during the night hopefully which would allow him to be healthy enough to leave the hospital and join us here. They predict that he is going to have night terrors and nightmares when he settles in but after that he should be fine, and they have medication to give him which Caleb will be organising and supervising. He doesn’t want any children to take their own lives with medication while he can do something to prevent it from happening.

One by one the guys reluctantly left the room until it was just George and I left. We were excited still for tomorrow and we couldn’t wait to meet the new member of the group. I want to help Danny as much as possible. “Hey, Caleb is right you know Jorel, we need to get to sleep now. I know you are excited about Danny arriving tomorrow but tomorrow comes quicker when you sleep,” he says, quoting one of the care workers from when we were little. She would always tell us either the day before our birthday or the day before Christmas that the next day would arrive quicker the sooner we fall asleep otherwise either the birthday fairy or father Christmas would not arrive, and we would have no presents.

Later on, when we were a bit older we knew, and we realised that it was a lie to get us to sleep sooner so we would be quiet, and she could leave the presents in our rooms and then go and do whatever she wanted for the night. She got fired for having a relationship with one of the teens a few years ago. Serves her right for being such a stuck up bitch all the time. “Yes dad, I will go to bed now,” I say, with a lot of sarcasm which made George look horrified. “Just go to bed Jorel and never call me that again,” he says, and I chuckle at him. “Okay George, I will never say that again,” I tell him.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And that is the end of the first chapter of my new story I hope you enjoyed. Like slave this is only going to be ten chapters long, but it is a once a month update so we will have about nine months to enjoy the storyline and what not.


	2. Chapter 2

Danny p.o.v

“I have never seen a kid more nervous about everything in my life,” I hear one of the nurses tell another. I am sitting on my bed staring out the window waiting for my social worker come and take me to the Lost Boy’s home. They aren’t sure if they will make me start school after the weekend because of my issues and my lack of ability to read. “I wouldn’t be surprised once you discover his history and how he has spent his life so far. His hospital stay has been the only time he has had a room that hasn’t given him claustrophobia,” the other nurse says. I wasn’t keen on how they knew my story and everything, but I guess they had to know because of the way I was behaving and how scared I was of pretty much everyone who came near me.

Caleb, who introduced himself to me as my main social worker said I was going to be sharing a room with a guy called Jordon and hanging out with the four guys he was friends with. I was nervous, but Caleb showed me pictures of them and told me some things about them. It made me a little less nervous, but I don’t know if I feel like I will be able to trust them right away with how my life has been up till now. Caleb said one of them might teach me how to read which would be nice. I want to learn how to read and write. I don’t think it will start happening until I calm down and get settled in with the guys. I don’t know any of them and I will be meeting all five today according to Caleb, but that might depend on how I feel.

“You can’t help but feel sorry for the boy. I wish we could help him more,” a nurse says, I think it was the second one that spoke before. I don’t get why they want to help me so much, I am just a massive fuck up. That’s what my mom keeps calling me anyway. “Yeah, there isn’t a lot we can do though hun. We are nurses not councillors, he would need more mental health support than medical,” the first nurse says. I don’t know what they are talking about anymore, but it is making me uncomfortable to hear them talking about me so much. I walked over to the chair by the window and wrapped my arms around my legs. I was grateful that they brought me a rocking chair, it helps me calm down when I am getting too stressed.

I was looking out the window as I slowly start rocking myself. The nurses were watching me, I could tell but I needed to calm myself down. I still think my parents are coming to pick me up and they are not going to be happy with me. I know kinda that they are in jail and not coming. I heard someone walk over to me, but I was too distracted in my mini panic attack to notice who. “Hey Danny? It’s gonna be okay. You don’t have to go back to those people anymore,” a male nurse tells me and rubs my arm. I was mumbling a lot, I guess he managed to make out what I was saying. “They aren’t coming to get me?” I ask the nurse. I sounded like such a little kid just then and I don’t think he liked my lack of understanding of the situation.

“Nope, they are not going to be allowed anywhere near you. Caleb is going to be the only one outside of the medical team here that can see you,” the male nurse tells me. Then he guides me through some breathing exercises to help me get through my panic attack. I look at him and he notices how nervous I still am. “Don’t worry Danny. You are going to be going through anxiety. Just a month or so ago the police came and turned your world upside down. It is going to take a lot to get used to but everyone around you will support you no matter what,” he tells me. It was almost like he was reading my thoughts. I heard one nurse say he has worked on cases like mine before, so he knows how people feel and what to do.

“Yeah, I think it’s going to take a while for me to get used to this. I still think my mom and dad are coming back and when they get me they aren’t going to be happy with me because of what has been going on,” I tell him. I felt like I could be open with him and that he was a trustworthy person. He has told me a few times that I could tell him anything that I felt that I wasn’t able to share with others and that he would listen to me and make me feel happy with what is going on around me. “That’s okay Danny. I think you have done amazing so far and you’ll easily keep this up. Tonight, you are going to be in a comfy bed with someone who is very eager to meet you and look after you and you can take it one day at a time,” the nurse tells me.

I liked the sound of being in a comfy bed. The hospital bed is better than the floor I used to sleep on, but they keep telling me how a bed with a good mattress is the best thing in the world. Apparently the male nurse called Tommy is a mental health nurse which is why he seems to be helping me more than the other nurses I have seen. “Danny, they want you to have lunch before you leave. If you eat it all then I can take you for some ice cream,” Tommy says, and I smiled. Ice cream sounds good to me, especially mint choc chip. I have been a little bit awkward when it comes to eating three meals a day, but I am getting there slowly. “Okay Tommy, I promise you that I will eat it all,” I tell him. I have to be good and eat or they would make me stay longer because they’d try and put me down as anorexic or something.

“Good boy Danny, you have made some amazing progress since you were brought in here. You should be proud of yourself,” Tommy tells me, and I gave him another small smile. It’s good that I am making progress and I am getting better. I don’t know how the rest of the day is going to go though, I am going to be in a new place with new people and it’s gonna be scary for me. One wrong move and I could probably undo all the progress I have made since the police found me in the bedroom. I think the fox plushie that Caleb told me I am getting when I go to the Lost Boy’s home is going to help me out a lot. I will probably be snuggling with it every night and if the friend group allows me then I will probably keep it close when I am in certain rooms of the house.

“Do you want the pictures that Caleb gave you yesterday?” Tommy asks me, I think I can remember what pictures he gave me. They are little polaroids of the guys I am going to be meeting today and they have their names and a little bit of information about them. I nod, and he gives me the pictures from my drawer. Jordon is the guy I am going to be sharing a room with, he is 16 and he plays the guitar. Then there is Matt who is also 16 and he wants to be a drummer. Jorel and George are both 17 and George likes poetry whereas Jorel is into horror movies. Dylan is 15 and he likes drawing, Caleb also told me that Dylan is going to be in my classes with me when I go to high school. I am not going there though until I learn to read and write.

I think he said George was the one who was willing to teach me how to read and write. I am not one hundred percent sure on that but because he likes poetry it makes sense to me. It’s sad that he won’t be in my class to help me when I go to high school, but Caleb is probably going to arrange help there for me. Tommy left the room while I was looking at the pictures and came back with chicken nuggets and fries on a plate with a fork and some ketchup already on there. “Eat up Danny boy, you’re having lunch earlier than everyone because you’re leaving at half twelve,” Tommy says, and I smile. I thank him for the food and tuck in straight away. My brain is so used to ignoring the hunger because I never used to have food.

I have to retrain my brain now to recognise that when I am hungry I should go and ask for food because now there is no reason why I should be denied it. I finished my lunch and Tommy was happy with me. I like it when I make people happy, I hate it when they get angry at me and I don’t know what I have done to cause it. “Well done buddy, as promise we can go and get ice cream,” he tells me, and I cheered. I had forgotten about that bit until now. He chuckles at how happy I am and then takes my hand as we leave the room. I am still in the hospital gown, but I have no clothes to call my own until Caleb comes with them when he comes to pick me up in a little while. “Do you want mint?” Tommy asks.

“Yes please,” I tell him as we make our way from the ward I have been placed into to the outside area where there is an ice cream cart. We still have another half an hour until Caleb comes and I am not leaving at exactly half past twelve because there is paperwork that needs sorting out and stuff. We got the ice cream and Tommy took me back to my room. Since he is a mental health nurse he gets to stay with me a lot longer than the other nurses have. I kinda like the one on one time with Tommy, he has been really helpful to me while I get used to what normal life should be like. When we got back into my room I carefully made my way through the ice cream. I don’t want to get brain freeze like I did the first time.

“Well done, you are learning quickly,” Tommy tells me, and I smile. I think I made the same mistake about three or four times before I finally learned that if I eat ice cream too quickly then I am going to have brain freeze. “Hello Danny, how are you feeling today?” Caleb asks, he is about ten minutes early, I wasn’t quite finished with my ice cream yet. “He’s been a bit nervous, part of him is still convinced that his mom and dad are going to come and get him. However, he has been doing really well otherwise,” Tommy tells him. Tommy filled him in on what we have done together this morning while I finished my ice cream off. “That’s good, the boys are eager to meet you. They know you will be nervous, so they are going to calm their excitement down a bit, but I think you will settle in just fine,” Caleb tells me.

Caleb gave me the clothes once I had finished my ice cream and they both let me have some privacy to change. I carefully manged to untie the hospital gown and then I changed into the clean boxers. I was given my first ever pair of jeans and they felt weird when I first put them on. The top felt really soft against my skin. I had no idea what to do with the shoes though, so I reluctantly called Tommy for help. He came in and smiled at me. “Everything okay buddy?” he asks me. I pointed to the shoes and he knew. “I don’t know what to do,” I admit to him quietly and he puts his hand on my shoulder. He encourages me to sit down on the rocking chair and crouches down in front of me. “It’s okay Danny, no one is expecting you to know how shoes work. This is your first pair of shoes ever,” Tommy tells me.

They had Velcro straps on them, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to do them myself. I watched as Tommy gave me a demonstration with the one that will go on my left foot. He wasn’t putting them on me, he was just showing me what to do so I could do it myself. I opened the straps and then put my foot into the left shoe. It felt very weird, but I am sure I will quickly get used to it like I have everything else so far. I tightened the straps to where they felt comfortable on me and then did the same for the right shoe. “Hey, well done Danny. You are really getting the hang of these new challenges you keep getting,” Tommy tells me, and I smile. Then Caleb comes back into the room and I was all ready to leave for my new home.

“I’m going to get the discharge papers now Danny. I’ll be back in a minute,” Tommy says, leaving me alone with Caleb. I was no where near as nervous about being with him as I was yesterday. Caleb sat on my bed and patted the space next to it, I naturally went to sit next to him and he smiled. “They boys made you a video,” he tells me and then gets his phone out of his jean pocket and unlocks it. Then he goes to his gallery and presses the video that was the first item there. It was my new friends and they were in a room with lots of musical instruments inside it. They had made a song for me and they sounded so good together. “That’s good, they should be in a band together,” I tell Caleb once the song was over. “They are considering it, they have been writing songs for months now,” he tells me.

“I think they should go for it, when they finish high school. They have the talent to go far,” I tell him. I am only making observations since I don’t really know these people or the music industry all that well. Caleb smiles at me, at least I am having a good conversation with him. I feel very comfortable being around Caleb now which I think is necessary because I am going to be seeing him daily from now on. He shows me some more pictures of the guys and what they have been getting up to while they have been living there. They seem to have a lot of fun together, I don’t think I will fit in with them. They all seem so much different than I am. I don’t know why he chose them to be the group that helps me settle in.

“Don’t worry Danny, you are definitely going to fit in,” Caleb says, I mumble a lot without realising until someone says something about it. I mumble my thoughts as a way of coping with them. There are so many rushing through my head all day and every day while I live. Caleb rubs my shoulder, he knows by now how much doubt I had for myself. It’s going to take a while for me to get to a point where I have self-confidence back. Or I guess in my case it is getting confidence for the first time in my life. “Come on Danny, let’s go to the home. The guys are probably starting to get a little impatient now,” Caleb tells me, he takes my hand and I hold it tightly. I am going to be very nervous until we arrive at my new temporary home.

I still have a thought in the back of my head that Caleb is going to send me back to live with mom and dad. They won’t be able to put up with me, so they will want to send me back. “You will be fine Danny. I promise Caleb is taking you somewhere safe. It has been a pleasure having you on the ward,” Tommy says, it’s going to be hard for him. He has been used to spending all of his time with me and I will just sit there and be my usual self, I will never shout at him or be abusive towards any of the staff. Later today or tomorrow he will get a new patient and he or she might be the complete opposite to me. I thanked him for being there for me and Caleb said we would visit sometime to show how much progress I have made.

I have never ever been in a car before that I can remember, I was born in the apartment I was raised in. I was forced to keep quiet from the moment I was born so the neighbours wouldn’t discover me. It was only when someone saw me outside in the garden was the alarm raised with CPS and I was discovered. Then I was found barely clinging to life when CPS called my dad to arrange a meeting with him and mom to do a welfare check on me and to discover why I had not been to school ever and why I had never been to doctors appointments or anything along that nature. I had several appointments once I was found, I had dentists look at my teeth I had all the vaccines under the current system. That was horrible, I felt so ill afterwards.

Luckily they have said I don’t really need to have any vaccines now. “Have you ever been in a car Danny?” Caleb asks me. I had stopped nervously in front of the car and I had no idea what I was supposed to do next. I looked at him and shook my head. He takes my hands in his. “It’s going to be alright Danny. All you have to do when I open this door is sit on the seat. I’ll help you with the rest,” he tells me. He lets go of one of my hands to open the car door. Then I get in the seat with his help and he puts this weird thing on me. “This is a seatbelt, it helps to keep you safe in the car,” Caleb explains. I feel like that is something I should know already but hey I lived a sheltered life so there is a lot I don’t know about the world that I should know at fourteen years old.

The car ride was okay, Caleb put the radio on which helped me stay calm. I love music so that is something that I have in common with the five guys I am going to meet in a little while. I feel like that is going to be the only thing though. “We are going to take this nice and steady. First I am going to show you where your room is and let you meet Jordon. Then if you are comfortable with it I will slowly add the other four in. You can always tell me if you feel too uncomfortable and we can push it back a little bit,” Caleb tells me, and I nod. At least he had a plan for what is going to happen during today. Since I am sharing the room with Jordon I guess it is more important for me to meet him first and then the others one by one.

Soon we were standing outside of a house, it was massive. Way bigger than the apartment that I came from. Caleb has his hand on my shoulder and we walk inside. There are so many people here its making me nervous. “It’s going to be okay Danny, keep going,” Caleb tells me and points towards the staircase. I have never been up stairs before. Dad always made me take the lift when we lived in the apartment block or he’d carry me up the stairs. I nervously held the rail on the side and followed Caleb up the stairs and to the left hallway. I followed him until he stopped at a door, I guess this is my bedroom then. Well, my bedroom with Jordon. Caleb knocks on the door and Jordon opened it a minute later.

He looked exactly the same as he did on the picture which is how I was able to recognise him as Jordon so quickly. “Hey Jordon, I have a very nervous Danny behind me ready to meet you,” Caleb says, he lets me stay behind him as Jordon invites us in. The bunkbed in the room looks good, the top bunk is obviously Jordon’s, so the larger bottom bunk is mine. There is a fox plushie on the bed which I am guessing is mine. I go to sit on the bunk and pick it up. “Hey Danny, I’m Jordon,” Jordon tells me, and he sits on the floor a few metres away from me. I don’t get why he did that, he could have sat next to me. “Hi Jordon,” I say, and I nearly stuttered through that. Caleb watches how we do and how we are quite easily getting along with each other.

He asked me if I wanted to meet someone else next, see how I do with that. “I think I can do it,” I tell him, Jordon had said he didn’t want to sit next to me at first because he didn’t want me to become scared of him. “That’s good Danny. Remember what I told you, anytime you feel like this is getting too much then let me know and it will stop,” Caleb tells me, and I nod to let him know that I understood what he told me. “Right, I’ll get George next,” Caleb says after a minute. George is the one who might be teaching me how to read. Jordon told me that his muscles are quite big, but I shouldn’t be scared of him. He is a gentle giant I have been told so I feel a little more prepared for what this meeting will bring.

George knocked on the door and walked in when Jordon told him that it was okay. Caleb was still with us to make sure that this goes smoothly and my well being is just as important as theirs. Jordon was right, I was quite intimidated by George at first. He’s a gentle giant though I just gotta keep telling myself that until its okay. “Hey Danny, I know I am a bit intimidating, but I am not going to do anything without your permission,” he tells me, and I smile. I got to know him, and he is really nice just like Jordon is. They didn’t care when I stuttered or when I accidently spoke in Spanish instead of English. They just want to help me and give me friendships for the first time in my life. I was interested to see what this day was going to bring me.

Then Caleb decided I could meet Jorel now, I was getting along with George and Jordon really well at this point. I think if I can stay calm and comfortable I will have five friends by dinner time. After I meet Jorel I only need to meet Dylan and Matt then I have met everyone in the friend group Caleb has said will help me settle in here. Jordon said there might be a guy who is called Aaron who might pop in from time to time, but they aren’t friends with him. They used to be, but he chose smokers and druggies over them, so they said there was no point wasting their time trying to fix a relationship when he won’t help. That is fair enough, I don’t think I would bother with someone like that because it sounds so draining.

Jorel is just as amazing as George and Jordon are. He brought his guitar in with him and decided to play one of the songs that they were working on together. It was the main thing that I have in common with all five of them, I love music as much as they do. “Hey Danny, have you ever played before?” Jorel asks me, I look at him and nod. We used to have a guitar in the apartment and I taught myself in secret. “There was a guitar in the apartment and I always tried to play it when dad wasn’t around. When my mom was in a good mood she’d buy me all the books and things. I can read sheet music well, but not actual words yet,” I tell them, it felt a little embarrassing to admit that, but I think they knew that I am dyslexic by now.

“Give it a go Danny, I would like to know what you know,” Jorel says, handing me his guitar. I took it very carefully. I didn’t want to drop it or break it, he might get mad at me and I don’t want that either. I just met this guy and I don’t want him to hate me straight away. I get comfortable and strum one chord. Then I play the first song I ever learned on guitar, Hey There Delilah by Plain White T’s. My mom used to sing the words, I can’t bring myself to do it though. It brings back the good memories which I want, but also the bad memories as dad caught me one time playing, and he got so mad. Jorel knew the song so he was singing for me. I know it’s an easy song to play, but I am too nervous to play something more complicated right now.

I hadn’t realised Matt and Dylan walked in when I started playing. I only noticed when I had finished because they were all clapping for me. “Hey Danny, do you know how to play Wonderwall?” Jorel asks, I was a little nervous because Matt and Dylan had joined but if they are like Jordon, George and Jorel then I really have nothing to worry about. I didn’t give him a verbal answer, I just started playing the song. Maybe I can sing this one with them, I think that I would be comfortable with that. I want to hear how I sound with them. Jordon was already singing, and it was coming to the chorus soon. The guys were waiting for it, I could tell. Jordon sounds really good singing this with me playing the guitar

And all the roads we have to walk are winding

And all the lights that lead us there are blinding

There are many things that I

Would like to say to you but I don't know how

Because maybe, you're gonna be the one that saves me

And after all, you're my wonderwall

I was surprised as Jordon went into the second verse that I didn’t screw up at all. Matt was tapping the wooden box he was sitting on. He told me later that it was called a Cajon. “Wow, you have the voice and musical talent to go with. You do fit in with us,” Dylan says once the song was over. Caleb agreed, even if he was a bit silly with his singing at times. I felt my cheeks go red, this is my first ever performance in front of people who were more like strangers to me. “He’s right Danny, you are so amazing, and we are glad to have you,” Jorel says, they all seem to like me which is weird. No one ever likes me, well until now nobody has liked me. Mom said dad hated me from the moment he saw me, and she slowly grew to hate me too.

I carefully hand the guitar back to Jorel, he will probably play some more songs. Matt introduces himself and says that he is the drummer guy in the band. I am so excited to get to know them more as the days go by. Dylan was the youngest in the group until I arrived, he was going to be in the same grades as me at school since he has to repeat the grade I am in this year and if he does well then we will be going through the same things throughout high school. “So, maybe in a couple of days would you like your first reading lesson?” George asks me. Caleb left because I was very comfortable being around the five guys. “That sounds good to me George,” I reply, he smiles. I can’t wait to learn how to read.

“Yeah, I think you will learn in no time Danny. You are a quick learner from what Caleb has told us,” George says. Tommy obviously kept Caleb up to date on how I was adapting in the hospital. I feel now that I have done really well. This time yesterday if you told me that I would be in a home with five amazing friends then I would have told you that you were taking drugs or something. Now it has happened I feel more positive about my future. “He can even help with English work, George is very smart,” Jordon tells me. They have all probably asked him for homework help lots of times before. I will try and do it on my own without help, but I know that they will be there for me if I need them for help.

“All of you are smart when you use your brains,” George says, and I chuckle. They probably have conversations like this often. “Yeah, we know. We just choose not to,” Jorel tells me and then we both chuckle. I love how well I am getting along with these people. This is a little unreal to me, I never thought that I would have people who care about me. Jordon and I naturally ended up in a position where I was resting my head on his shoulder, and he has his arm wrapped around me. “You okay Danny?” Dylan asks me. I was dozing off a little bit. I nodded and made sure that I was more awake. “He will be tired, he’s still recovering from the nasty stuff. Caleb said he might be sleepy and nap sometimes,” Matt replies.

“Go to sleep if you want Danny, dinner isn’t for another few hours yet. We can wake you on time,” Jordon tells me, and I sleepily nod. Man, I am not used to being awake for this long. I would have cried myself to sleep after a panic attack when Tommy has to leave by now. I am so used to Tommy being around for help. It will be hard to get used to him not being there, but I have five people and the social workers to help me now. Everything is going to be fine I know it now. Jordon put the fox plushie back in my hand and I was dozing off with my head still on his shoulder. I am safe now; my parent’s aren’t going to come and get me ever again. They are in prison now, hopefully for the rest of their lives. I never want to see them again.

Jorel woke me up three hours later telling me that it was dinner time. I was going to eat all of my dinner, they are going to be supervising my weight gain from here until I am the healthy weight I should be. After dinner Jorel and I played with the toddlers until it was their bedtime. They like me too, they said it was cool to see a new face in the home. They had plenty of babies, toddlers and small children arriving and leaving all the time, but hardly any teenagers. I guess teens are harder to adopt out, plenty are given up or grow up in the care system but once you turn thirteen your chances of being adopted drop, so I have been told. I don’t know if this is true or not yet, I have had no experiences with it.

Later that evening I watched a film with the guys, I was sitting in between George and Jordon the whole time. Dylan pointed out to me who Aaron was and I could feel his glare the entire time. It made me feel uncomfortable, but I try my best to ignore it. “Jordon, do you think Aaron hates me already?” I ask him when we get back to our room. I have to follow one of them around all the time because I am, so I don’t get lost. “Possibly, he doesn’t like a lot of people though. Don’t take it personally,” Jordon tells me. We talked some more before I lay down in the bed and hold the fox plushie tightly. Jordon told me good night and I told him the same before I managed to fall asleep. I am safe now.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And that is the end of the second chapter, I hope you enjoyed.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3 let’s go

@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~@~

The next day – Danny p.o.v

“Danny, what’s the matter?” Jordon asks me, I have been crying for some time now. I had a really nasty night terror and I hadn’t managed to calm myself down at all. “I’m sorry Jordon,” I tell him in between sobs and I feel him climbing down the little ladder. Then I felt the side of the bed I wasn’t curled up on sink down with his weight. “There is nothing to be sorry for, I know it’s three am right now, but that’s okay. I am here to help you Danny,” he tells me, and he rubs my back. I felt like I could tell him what’s bothering me like I could with Tommy back in the hospital. “I had a nightmare,” I mumble, and he heard me. I don’t feel like I can go into details about the nightmare itself, but Jordon will understand.

“That’s okay Danny, well nightmares aren’t great, but I can comfort you,” he says, and I let him lie down next to me on the bed. He was making random patterns in my back while I slowly stop sobbing. I roll over and bury my head into his chest and he wrapped his arms around me. I felt so protected with him here. “Thank you Jordon,” I tell him, I was feeling completely calm now and I was starting to get quite tired. I yawned and relaxed in Jordon’s arms. I don’t want him to leave me now, this is the safest I have ever felt. “You’re welcome Danny, how about you get some sleep. I am going to stay right here,” Jordon says. Then the room is flooded with light as our bedroom door is open and Caleb is in the door frame.

“You boys okay? You should be sleeping,” Caleb says, and we could hear the concern in his voice. It is my first night here, so I should have known that Caleb was more likely to come and check on me through the night. “Yeah, Danny had a nightmare, but he is fine now. We were just about to go back to sleep,” Jordon says, and Caleb chuckles. I bet he is tired too, spending all night to keep an eye on any new kid. “Okay, you know you can come and find me if you need me,” Caleb says and then we say good night to him and he leaves. We had already said goodnight to him once, but there was no harm in saying it again I guess. “The care workers sleep on the top floor, we aren’t allowed up there unless we need them at night,” Jordon explains.

I guess they have to keep at least one social worker here at all times because the babies will need night feeds and sometimes fights break out, so they need to deal with it. “Oh okay,” I tell him, I am nearly half awake at this point. “Yeah, you’ll get used to the rules eventually. Right now though I think sleep is the right thing for you right now,” he tells me. I yawn again then rest my head on Jordon’s chest. He hasn’t told me not to do it, so I am gonna keep doing it. At least I feel safe with him here. I am still convinced my birth parents are going to come and get me but for now I am aware they are in jail and not allowed to come near me. “Thank you for keeping me safe Jordon,” I tell him, and he chuckles.

“You’re welcome Danny, now go to sleep,” he says, and I close my eyes. I think he did the same because a few minutes later his grip on me got a little looser and he stopped drawing little patterns on my back. I am having a slightly harder time trying to fall asleep, but this environment is a lot nicer than the apartment I came from and slightly better than the hospital. I guess I was used to screaming and crying people at all hours of the night. I snuggle up closer to Jordon to see if I can actually fall asleep. It is probably closer to four in the morning now although if I think about that I will be watching the time until it is morning and I won’t sleep. At least I won’t have school in the morning like the others have. It was Sunday yesterday and Saturday the day before which makes today Monday I guess. Man I think too much at night.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

6 am

“Aw that’s so cute, I kinda don’t want to wake them both up,” I hear a female voice say. I guess it is one of the other social workers I haven’t met yet. I felt arms around me and remembered a little while ago I fell asleep in Jordon’s arms after he calmed me down from a nightmare. “Yeah, I’m glad Danny seems to be settling in well already. Jordon has to got to school in an hour and forty-five minutes, so they have to wake up,” I hear Caleb say. I forgot I wasn’t going to school until I learn to read and write, and I have settled in here a bit more. “Come on boys, it’s time to get up now,” the lady says, and I felt Jordon move. He mumbled five more minutes and she chuckled. “I can’t give you another five minutes Jordon. Come on Danny, time to wake up now,” she says, and I roll out of Jordon’s arms before sitting up and rubbing my eyes.

“Morning,” I tell her and Caleb. They both smile at me and Jordon was the next to wake up. He sat up and hugged me. “Morning boys, did you sleep okay?” Caleb asks, and I nod. Apart from that night terror at three this morning I slept really well. “Yeah, I slept good,” Jordon says, and he gets out of bed. Sarah tells me who she is and that there was breakfast downstairs. Jordon smiles at me and pulls me out of the bed. “Hey, how are you feeling this morning?” he asks me. “I feel good, definitely better after you calmed me down last night,” I tell him, and I smile at him. it felt nice to have someone care about me. I am not used to it, but I am quickly managing to adjust to it. “That’s good Danny, you can come to any of us if you need us,” he tells me.

“Yeah, I appreciate it a lot Jordon,” I tell him as we walk towards the dining room where we are probably going to have cereal. I don’t know what they do for breakfast obviously. Sarah was there with another woman when we walked into the dining room. “Morning boys, do you want eggs and toast?” Sarah asks and I not. I was a bit nervous about it all, so I just agreed to the first thing that was offered to me. She gave me a plate a couple of minutes later and I found George and the others, so I walked over to them. I saw Aron to, he looked uglier in the day light you could definitely see the horse face they used to describe him too me. “Morning Dan,” George says when he sees me. The others waved at me since they had food in their mouths.

“Morning,” I tell him. This was best eggs on toast I have ever eaten. The hospital food was like cardboard in comparison. Then again I remember people asking me in the hospital why I liked the food so much. I had never eaten solid food until then, I would get milk everyday of my life like I was still a baby. They never bought food for me, always bought food for themselves. “Did you sleep okay Dan?” Jorel asks me and I nod. “He slept really good,” Jordon says, he got three sausages and some bacon too. When I wasn’t looking he put a sausage on my plate, when I looked down again I saw it. “Thanks,” I tell him and take a bite straight away. They laugh, I am so glad that I have them as friends. I’m really starting to enjoy food now.

“Morning boys, so you five have school today and I think Danny and I are going to get a little bit of stuff done while you’re gone,” Caleb says. I think he said he was going to teach me to write so I am learning all the time during the day and then I can get to school quicker. I probably should learn to read before I start writing but maybe I’ll be doing both at the same time. “Fair enough, I could probably start helping him out tonight after school,” George says, and I smile. I know yesterday he said in a couple of days’ time he will teach me how to read, but I am starting to settle in a lot quicker than people expected me too. “That sounds good,” I tell George, they have to go and get ready for school and I might as well get dressed too.

I don’t know if I am leaving the house though. I doubt it since I am quite scared of a lot of different things I should be, and I don’t really know a lot right now. I found a pair of ripped skinny jeans Jordon said were mine and a Nirvana t-shirt which I put on after spraying deodorant. Jordon smiled at me, I am getting used to normal life slowly but surely. I was in hospital for a month, one week of that was spent in a coma and now this is my first full day living a normal life. The life I should have been living from the start really. “You look so much better in that top than I do,” Jordon says as he sees me. I believe that most of my clothes did belong to the other guys at some point and they don’t fit them anymore.

“Uh thanks Jordon, I’ve never really worn this kind of stuff before,” I tell him, I have been informed that Nirvana is a band and before I go out in public wearing this I need to listen to them, so I can avoid being yelled at for wearing a t-shirt because I think it looks good and not actually know the band it is about. I don’t even think I actually owned any clothes before now. I was found in just my boxers apparently. “You should wear these more often Danny. I’ll play you some Nirvana after school okay?” Jordon tells me, and I nodded at him. That sounds like a good plan for me, I don’t think that I have any other plans apart from George possibly teaching me how to read. Although I could probably learn to read and listen to Nirvana at the same time.

“I’m going to teach Danny how to write and start teaching him how to read while you guys are at school. I hope we can get him settled in the house first and then settled into school as soon as we can. He can have a better chance of catching up if he joins before the middle of the school year,” Caleb tells me, we were having a talk about the plans for the day while we waited for the bus to come and pick the others up for school. “That sounds good, I hope that if you start with the very basics of reading then I can read with him some less childish stories later,” George tells us. That makes sense, I think it might be weird to read little kid books without a kid being there. I suppose it has to be done though to learn how to read.

“Don’t forget Danny, if you get too tired during the day and you could take a nap. I know you had a bad night last,” Caleb tells me as we go to a classroom looking room. The others had gone to school already, so it was just going to be me and him having some one on one time before lunch or before I get too tired. It’s really a case of whatever comes first. Caleb got out a notebook and pen and some books. “Okay so I guess the easiest place to start is the alphabet,” he tells me. There was a kids book which was going to go through A-Z, so I could finally learn to write the alphabet. I felt so embarrassed, but Caleb was making sure that I knew that it was okay to be learning this now after everything I had personally been through. My circumstances are different to everyone else’s my age.

I managed to go through the alphabet a few times and Caleb was smiling at me. I think he is proud of me, someone is proud of me for once. “Wow, I am impressed with how quickly you are managing to pick this up Danny. Now let’s see if you can write the alphabet,” Caleb says, he writes the alphabet in capital letters on a page of the paper. I was watching him carefully so that I would be able to copy them. I kept mixing up D and P when I was reading them out loud when they weren’t capitals. When Caleb had finished writing the letters he passed me the pen and I held it in my left hand. I started with A and about ten minutes later I was at W which was better than I was expecting, and Caleb was smiling at me.

“Hey Danny, don’t get frustrated too much. You are doing really well with your dyslexia and you are writing the alphabet for the first time,” Caleb tells me. I took a break for a minute, I was struggling to write the letters while they seemed to be moving around on the page while in reality they didn’t really move. “Yeah, I think I am finding dyslexia harder to cope with than I first thought,” I tell him. I feel glad that I can have someone to talk to like this, I don’t think I could have had conversations like this with anyone else. He really does have a lot of experience working with kids and dealing with many issues that they might have while they are with him. “I know Danny, you will be getting the hang of it eventually, I am not expecting it to be perfect overnight,” Caleb tells me.

“I guess so,” I tell him, and I continued to write the alphabet as I only had x, y, and z to write I did it in no time. I was so happy with myself and I smiled at him while he looks at what I had managed to write. “I am impressed Danny, now you are gonna do it with the lower case of the alphabet,” he tells me, and it takes me a few tries as I got the d and the p mixed up again. Caleb made sure that I wasn’t too upset by how many times I managed to get them mixed up. When I managed to do it, he made me take a break to get a drink and a snack as it was getting towards 11 am. I smiled at him and he rubbed my shoulder. “You are doing really well Danny. Once you have had a little break then I’m gonna ask you to write your own name,” he tells me.

I think it’s going to be good to know how to write my own name. Dylan is going to be helping me with my school work in class when I go and then George when I am at home. I want to be normal for once and to be able to keep up with my peers instead of being so far behind everyone else. I ate the apple slices while Caleb was getting to work on the next part of my writing lesson. I was reading out loud in between bites. I am going to be able to read the word cat without sounding so slow. I’m very impressed with myself. Never in a million years did I think that I was going to be reading and learning how to write. Well I don’t think I will make it to a million, but I keep hearing this saying every day while I was in the hospital.

Now it’s time to write my name for the first time. Well, Caleb made me read out my own name first which I managed quite easily. D-a-n-n-y M-u-r-i-l-l-o, or D-a-n-i-e-l depending on what name I preferred. I definitely prefer Danny over Daniel and I have no choice on my surname being Murillo unless I get adopted by someone and they want me to have their surname. I wrote both Danny and Daniel Murillo to get used to writing D in both upper case and lower case. Just so that I can get used to being able to write properly. “Well done Danny, you are acing this. Let’s get the most common sentence,” he tells me. I have no idea what he is talking about, but I was glad that I was learning so quickly.

It turns out what he wanted me to write was The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog. It uses both the letters that I am going to struggle with still. I am going to take my time and form the letters properly. I am going to work hard and write like a 9th grade student should be able to. I was so proud of myself when we moved to a little bit a light reading to finish off before we go to lunch and I was definitely showing how tired I was getting to Caleb who was carefully watching me. I feel like I am doing better than I ever expected to do. When I had finished reading the two books Caleb felt I was comfortable with, he declared that it was lunch time and I asked him if it was okay to take a nap afterwards. I was very tired at this point, that nightmare shook me up badly.

“You can go straight to yours and Jordon’s room when you are done with lunch, I’ll let them know you are asleep if you are still napping when they come home,” he tells me. They finish school at 3:05 pm and come home by 3:30 pm and I don’t know if I am going to still be asleep by then, I guess it is 1 pm now. Lunch was a basic chicken and mayo sandwich and some chips, but I still ate it all. I am doing really well with getting some good eating habits now, it was impressive to go from being starved to eating three meals a day, but I have been doing it for about three weeks now. I was getting very tired by the time lunch was over I told Caleb I was going to my room for a bit and he said that was okay. I was too tired to say it was mine and Jordon’s.

He will probably check on me in a little while. I hope I don’t have another nightmare, that first one I had last night was awful. I was so glad Jordon was not judgemental while he was comforting me last night or I guess it should be early this morning. I was so grateful that I had him in my life and he just decided to comfort me out of the goodness of his heart. I manage to find the room straight away and crawled under the covers straight away, I grab my fox plush and close my eyes. I managed to fall asleep quite quickly.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

4 pm

“Remember, we have to be quiet because Danny is still sleeping,” Jordon whispers. I have been going in between sleep and being awake for the last sort of three hours now and it was making me feel more exhausted than I did before I had the nap. I rolled over and made it look like I was still asleep. I was hoping somehow I could fall back to sleep, but it didn’t happen quite like I had hoped. “I know, Caleb said he did really good today, he worked hard on his writing,” George whispers back. There was no way I was going back to sleep now and I’m going to have to let them know that I am awake, I rolled back over and stretched before looking at them with a sleepy smile. “Hey Danny, did we wake you up?” George asks me.

“No, I was awake just before you came in. I thought that I’d be able to have a decent nap, but I didn’t,” I tell him, and he pulls me into a hug. Jordon was sitting next to him, looking at me worriedly. He obviously knew how bad my night was last night. “How bad was it?” Jordon asks, I felt comfortable with them both, even a little sleepy from what happened. “I kinda went between being awake and asleep for the last three hours. Like I would sleep for half an hour then be awake for half an hour and it goes in a circle,” I tell them. I yawned in George’s arms and he chuckles at me. Jordon grabbed a book from the bookshelf and passed it to George who showed me the book. I guess Caleb told them how alright my reading is now.

“We’re only going to do a little bit of reading Danny, I know you are tired,” George tells me, and I managed to read the book with a little bit of a struggle. I did yawn a couple of times while I was reading but it was okay. “Hey, that was good Danny. Caleb was right, you do learn incredibly quickly,” George says when I finished reading the book. It was the longest book I have ever read at this point and I was feeling pretty proud of myself. I still feel my hospital experience was weird. I woke up in a bed for the first time with people rushing around and telling me how everything was fine and that my parents were in jail. I didn’t understand a thing about what was going on around me. I jumped as the door slammed open.

It was Aron, with Jorel behind him desperately pleading with him to leave us alone. “So this is the faggot who thinks he is going to replace me,” Aron says, before grabbing me by my t-shirt and slamming me into the wall. I was terrified, and I looked to Jorel hoping that he would save me by getting someone to help me. Well, I guess they could help me, but they were just as stunned as I was. When Aron threw the first punch, Jorel went running to get someone. “Aron there is no need for this. You fucking left us for nine lives in the first place,” Jordon says, as I am being punched in various places. “Danny has nothing to do with our feud leave him alone,” George says, seconds later Caleb comes in and drags Aron off me.

I just sank down to the floor, it brought back so many raw memories of my father doing the same thing. Storming into my room, slamming me into a wall, calling me a faggot and punching the living daylights out of me until he gets bored. Caleb mentioned something about getting the police, but I couldn’t hear anything going on anymore. I was in immense pain and it was like I was back at home being beaten up. I felt someone touch my shoulder and I fell to the side. “Put him on his bed,” I heard someone say, well I think it was Jordon who said it. I couldn’t tell anymore, I wasn’t even sure where I was at this point. “What the heck happened to him?” I heard someone else ask, this time I had no idea who they were.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jordon p.o.v

I have no idea what the fuck just happened, so George told Dylan who walked in what just went on. Danny is now passed out on his own bed, covered in his own blood from his nose and his lip which had split. Caleb walked back in with the first aid kit and sat next to me. “I told the cops what happened to Danny, they said they were going to caution Aron for it,” he tells us, and I think we all shouted what? Aron just walks into mine and Danny’s room for no reason, slams Danny into the wall, beats the living shit out of Danny and he gets away with a caution. Danny is unconscious because of him, surely he should have at least a night or a week in jail for it. I’m pretty sure Danny was suffering from a flash back before he passed out.

I clean up Danny’s face and Caleb checks for any damage that the younger kid might need medical attention for. It seems like he is getting away with a few bruises. “What’s gone on between you and Aron? He was very angry when I sent him to the cool off room before calling the cops,” Caleb asks, I don’t think Danny is going to be awake for a while. All I know for sure is that Danny was not a part of it. “He got mad because we were talking about becoming a band and when we did we would make sure everyone got a part in at least one song and he didn’t like that. He wanted it to be all about himself and he kinda stopped hanging out with us anyway. I don’t get what Danny has to do with it, we aren’t even a band yet and have only known Danny for twenty-four hours. We don’t know if he will sing with us yet,” George explains.

“Yeah, I think I get that now. I’ll try get Aron to leave you guys alone from now on, especially Danny. He doesn’t need that while he recovers from the abuse he went through. This might trigger quite a few bad memories for him, so you need to help him out,” Caleb says, then he leaves and says to come and get him when Danny wakes up, so he can have some pain medication. I lay down next to Danny and just keep an eye on him, he has a lot of blood in his nose. “He’s going to be okay Jordon, we can look after him like pros,” George tells me. Jorel walks in and sits on the floor next to Dylan. I don’t know where Matt is, but he is probably busy with Austin somewhere. “I can’t believe Aron decided to beat Danny up like that,” Jorel says.

“Me neither, I hope he is going to be okay,” George says, and I rub Danny’s shoulder. I don’t even think he knows that I am there right now. He is not responding to anything we are doing around him which is not that great. Then again he only passed out five minutes ago and he could be out for a couple of hours at least. “We can always get Caleb if he isn’t okay. I think dinner is in a couple of hours and he should be awake by then,” Jorel says and I nod at him. I turn Danny on his side, so he was facing me, and I faced him. I was hoping that if he did get upset when he wakes up then I would be there to comfort him straight away. That’s if he wants me to comfort him, he might not want to speak to any of us again.

An hour passed before I felt Danny move against me, we had been playing Nirvana quietly while we were waiting for Danny to wake up. Caleb came in twice to check on Danny during this last hour and each time he became more and more worried about the smallest and youngest of our group. The lack of response worried all of us but know he is starting to wake up a little bit and it is going to be okay. “It’s alright Danny, no one is gonna hurt you now,” I tell him, and he rolls into me. I wrap my arms around him to comfort him some more. I feel so sorry for him, he has had the worst childhood out of all of us, he had the best day of his life so far yesterday (his words not mine) and now his afternoon has gone shitty.

“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. I won’t do it again I swear,” Danny says, sounding as terrified as he looked before he got beaten up. I look to George with my eyebrow raised and I think we kinda of realised that Danny is not actually fully with us yet. “Danny, you didn’t do anything,” George says, trying to hide how worried he was about what Danny had just told us. “Wait, what?” Danny says, I think he finally realised he wasn’t where he thought he was. Danny looks up at me and I smile at him. He hugs me tightly and I rub his back. “You’re okay buddy, you’re in the lost boys home and Aron kinda beat you up but he is gone now,” I tell him, I was not about to sugar coat anything for him because he deserves the truth.

“Yeah, I’m still sorry though. I had a flashback just after it happened, and I thought I lashed out at someone. It has happened with my dad in the past and it hasn’t ended well,” Danny says. Well he didn’t really hit anyone in the room when it happened. He just slumped and passed out. “You didn’t really fight back, he got you good so you kinda passed out just as your flashback started we think. It could have carried on while you were passed out though,” Jorel says, helping us fill in the blanks for Danny. I feel so sorry for him, I would seriously hate having the childhood that he had. I miss my parents and I am sad they died but I am so thankful that they never hurt me. I hug Danny back and he buries his head in my chest.

“Yeah, I just don’t want to hurt you guys,” Danny says, his voice muffled by my shirt while I hold him close to calm him down. He’s such a precious soul and he needs to be protected and we are going to be the guys who protect him. “Hey Danny, how are you feeling now?” Caleb asks, he saw that Danny is awake now and is probably quite relieved now. “Sore, but okay,” Danny tells him, his voice sounds weird because of the blood blocking his nose. Caleb gave him some pain killers and orange juice. “Dinner is gonna be in about half an hour? You guys gonna be okay to eat downstairs?” Caleb says, since we are teens we can eat up here, but we tend to set examples of the no food upstairs rule for the little ones, so we only sneak up snacks when they aren’t looking at us.

“Yeah, as long as no one asks questions about my nose,” Danny says, Aron didn’t really punch much of Danny’s face, only his nose. The rest was his stomach and arms mainly. I cleaned up most of the blood, so it doesn’t look too bad. “Don’t worry Danny, no one will ask. Those who need to know what happened know. We are trying to get Aron moved into a house because you are not the first kid he has beaten up this last month or so and you won’t be the last if I don’t do something,” Caleb tells us and ruffles Danny’s hair. Danny smiles, wow his smile is amazing. “Okay well, I expect you five down there in half an hour,” Caleb says and then leaves us to chill for that time. The only thing I think will happen at dinner is the toddlers be cute.

I was right, at dinner all the toddlers wanted to carefully kiss Danny’s nose to make it better. Danny didn’t know what to do at first, but I told him there was no harm in it and it wouldn’t hurt him that much. He let them do it and they were so happy. Little Luke asked twice, and Danny let him. Soon we are sitting on the bed and I was going to let Danny fall asleep in my arms if he wants to. I know that he is still a bit frightened after what happened a few hours ago. He told us what happened in his flashback, George encouraged him because it was a good step towards his recovery. I look towards Danny to see what he wanted to do but he had already fallen asleep in his pjs in my arms. “Goodnight Danny,” I tell him and go to sleep myself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well I hope you enjoyed chapter three! See you next time


	4. Chapter 4

Danny p.o.v

“What are you doing?” I ask Caleb. It has been a couple of days since Aron beat me up and I am doing a lot better. My nose is fine now, I don’t have blood in it anymore. The nightmares have not gotten any easier, but I had one of my friends lay with me at night, so it made it a little easier to go back to sleep afterwards. “You’re going to have a bath Danny. I know you have never had one before, but they aren’t scary at all I promise,” he replies. He’s slowly introducing me to everything that I should know as a fourteen year old. He said that if I was still doing this well that next week I will be able to start school with the rest of the guys. I was so nervous, but I trust that Caleb was going to keep me safe. he was keeping the police updated with anything new that I told him about my experience at home with my birth parents.

Soon, he has to go to court as my birth parents will be on trial. He has to give evidence on my behalf and I am able to go if I feel confident enough to. I can be hidden on the stand so that they don’t see me. Caleb say it will be good for me to be able to watch my parents get the verdict and possible sentence for what they have done to me. “I’m a little bit scared,” I tell Caleb, and he takes my hand and I follow him into the bathroom. He shows me what a bath tub looks like and I put my hand into the water. It felt really warm against my hand and I smiled at him. “See, it’s not that scary,” Caleb tells me, and I nod. I guess I was always taught to fear the bath tub and any form of hygiene. Caleb never once teased me for being a little bit afraid of the bath.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him, and he pulls me into a gentle hug. I still find the word sorry being a huge part of my daily vocabulary. “There is no need to be sorry Dan. All of this is new to you, I understand that your emotions will be all over the place,” Caleb tells me, he lets me tell him when I think the water is the right temperature for me and he turns the tap off. I take all of my clothes off then get into the water. I gasp, and Caleb looks at me with concern on his face. “It’s really nice,” I tell him, making sure he knows I am okay and I am happy right now. He chuckles and pours some of the water onto my hair. “That’s alright then, now let’s get you all clean,” he tells me then shows me the shampoo bottle he wanted to use.

It smelled like apples and I never thought that it would smell as good as it did. I knew that I couldn’t eat it thought, I wasn’t that silly. Caleb smiled as I closed my eyes. I was enjoying the massage that he was giving me while he was rubbing the shampoo in my hair and I heard him chuckle again. “I’m glad you are enjoying this Dan,” he tells me, and I smile. Ten minutes later I was all clean and dressed. I know he is taking me to my first doctors appointment soon and I was very nervous for that. I don’t quite know what to think about doctors yet, I was scared being in the hospital when I was rescued. Caleb knows how worried I am, and he will make sure that I am calm during my appointment. It’s just going to be a little check-up.

“You’ll be okay Danny, I will be with you the whole time. There is nothing to be afraid of, they won’t do anything you aren’t comfortable with,” he tells me, as we get into the car. I really wanted George or Jorel to be with me, but they are still in school. I trust Caleb with my life, so I know he will keep me safe from all the scary doctors. I guess I am making assumptions by saying that all doctors are scary when they probably aren’t. I just haven’t got any experiences with doctors to make a judgement on how they are. They might be very nice to me, I just don’t know yet. It takes ten minutes to get to the doctors and Caleb keeps his hand on my shoulder as we walk in and we go to reception where he gives my name because I find myself unable to speak.

It’s not the first time that I have become mute all of a sudden. They said it would happen as a result of the trauma that I have gone through. That’s why George started using American sign language with me. Then if I suddenly become mute I have a way to communicate with him what I want to say about how I am feeling and if I want to do something. Caleb knows it too, he was the one who taught George first and has taught me a little bit. Caleb guided me towards a chair while we wait for my name to be called. People were giving us strange looks, it made me want to hide more and more, but I can’t until we get back to the Lost Boy’s home. “It’s gonna be fine Danny. Let me show you something,” Caleb says.

He gets his phone out and shows me a video. I distracted myself by watching all of the videos he showed me. It kept me calm and I looked up once to see him smile when I relaxed into his arm and I was showing that I was on the mend from a lifetime of abuse. It has taken me a month to be able to trust Caleb and I am glad that I am now able to trust him quite easily. I got more nervous when the doctor called my name out. I still don’t react well to being called Daniel. Caleb has his hand on my shoulder and we walk into the doctor’s room. “Is there a nickname he prefers? I read his notes and I don’t want to make him uncomfortable,” the doctor asks Caleb, who says that my preferred name is Danny.

“All I want to do Danny is give you a quick check-up to make sure that you are okay,” the doctor says, and I nod. I am a bit nervous, but from what I can tell so far he does want to help me and he does seem trust worthy. I look nervously at him, but he guides me through all of the steps. He even says that I could do the things to him or Caleb first before he does it with me. “Good job Danny. I am only gonna mention that the bruise on his nose and on his stomach were from Aron, who is another kid in the house and not from his birth parents,” Caleb says, the doctor was a bit concerned with the sight of the blood still in my nose from the nosebleed I had when Aron punched me. It has only been two days since that incident, but my nose was doing better than I expected it to.

The doctor said I was doing fine and in a couple of weeks I should be fit enough to start school for the first time in my life. I was excited and feeling a lot happier about doctors than I was an hour ago. “I’m proud of you Danny, this is the first time you have been outside since we brought you to the home and you’ve done amazing. Now, we are going to a little café to have some lunch and you can do whatever you want when we get back,” Caleb tells me, and I smile. I am kinda hungry right now, so lunch sounds really good. I am probably going to nap when we get back. It seems to have become part of my routine now. I have bad nights and then nap to make up for the lost sleep. He smiles at me.

I am glad that Caleb is proud of me. I don’t think that anyone has been this proud of me before. People keep giving us odd looks as we walk up to this little café for our lunch. Caleb said it was because of the fact that we look like father and son and they assume I should be in school and not wandering around. Caleb shows me what the menu is and lets me spend some time to make a decision on what I want for lunch. “What do you want for lunch Dan?” he asks me, and I point to what I want, a grilled cheese sandwich and I wasn’t sure what drink I want. I will let him chose what drink I might like. He told me to find a table and he will come and sit with me when he has finished with our order. I find one in the corner.

I was getting a bit more anxious being on my own, but I know Caleb will be back in a minute or so. This old lady was watching me, and I was nervous. I had no idea what she was going to do or say. “Hello young man, are you alright?” she asks me, she comes to sit next to me and I just let her do it. She knows how nervous I am, but she lets me take my time. “Hi, I’m okay. Just a little nervous about being on my own,” I tell her. Caleb came back with a banana milkshake and I smile at him. “Hello Mary, it’s nice to see you again,” Caleb tells the old lady. It made me feel more comfortable if she knows my caregiver. “Hello Caleb, just meeting your young man. I noticed he was starting to panic a little bit, so I thought I would keep him company,” Mary replies. She sounds really nice and I appreciate how kind she is.

“Aw thank you Mary. This is Danny, we just got him from a pretty nasty situation about a couple of weeks ago. This is the first time he has been out like this and he has been very good and mostly calm until now, but I realised that being on his own would make him a bit more upset,” Caleb says and hands me the milkshake. It tasted so good and I smiled at Caleb. Mary was still being kind to me and Caleb, she decided to tell me a story while we wait for the food. I wasn’t sure if my name has been mentioned in the news at all, but from Mary’s reaction I don’t think she knows. My name would have to be kept out of it for safety reasons. They usually keep the child’s name out of it in any situation like this.

I like her stories, she has a lot of world war two stories. I never heard of the war until George told me about it when I asked for a story when I couldn’t sleep one night. I found the war fascinating and George was happy he had someone to share his enthusiasm with. Mary was happy to have someone who listens to her stories. Caleb was happy that I was happy and back to my calm self which I wasn’t really when I was on my own. Soon the food was here, and Mary decided that it was her time to leave. “Well, it was lovely to meet you Danny. Hope to see you soon,” she tells me. She said goodbye to Caleb and I finally got the courage to speak and I told her that it was nice to meet her, and I hoped to see her again one day.

“Well done Danny, I am so proud of you buddy. I often invite Mary to spend some time at the home and we could arrange some one on one sessions if that will benefit you more,” he tells me. That sounds good, I liked Mary a lot. She is the female role model that I have been missing all of my life. She’s like a grandma to everyone. That’s what Caleb told me while I was in the middle of a mouthful of grilled cheese. It kind of felt like I took too much at once, so I let Caleb explain how Mary helps the children at the home. I think I see Caleb as a grandfather figure, I’m not sure if he intends himself to be seen that way. I am too scared to ask him about it. The milkshake was so good, and I was a little disappointed that I had finished it.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get you one to go. It’s good to see you have such an amazing appetite since the doctors told me they feared you would never eat anything,” Caleb says quietly. We be careful when we talk about what happened to me because we didn’t really want other people to know those intimate details even though if my father and mother are on the news then some of the details might have been mentioned already. “I was starved, so it wasn’t like I chose to eat nothing. If that makes sense. Now I have been given food my body is like, dude just eat it,” I tell Caleb quietly and he chuckles at the last sentence. I may have picked up a few words and stuff that the guys say. I know George says if that makes sense when he is explaining something to us.

“That does make sense, I am still learning more about what happened to you as they admit to more and more things,” Caleb tells me. There is a lot more horrifying things he has probably not learned about what happened to me yet. I really hope they lock the door and throw away the key when everything has been revealed. Some people may say that they deserve death row, but that would be the easy way out. I still have to live with what they have done to me for the rest of my life. He goes up to the bar again to order another milkshake for us to take home with me because I loved that so much. I feel more confident about being on my own this time around. “Come on Dan, let’s go,” Caleb says, and I walk with him to the car.

I had a sip of the milkshake and smiled. The guys will be back in a few hours and I can’t wait. I have become close to all of them. They often all stay in mine and Jordon’s room, so anyone can help me with my nightmares. George often tells me a story he has read to help me drift off to sleep. It’s been a really good way to help me and the others have started doing the same. Jordon and Dylan always tell the goofy stories and ones they make up from the top of their head. Jorel asked either yesterday or the day before if he could read to me so he could get more confidence because the little ones keep asking him to read them a story before bed. I even said if my reading was good enough I could join him, and we could both read a story to them together. It would make their day honestly.

Little Luke cried this morning when Jorel went off to school. He’s being fostered today, and he knows that means that he won’t see Jorel this afternoon. I helped calm him down by telling him that having a mom and a dad was a good thing and that they would have lots of fun together. We gave him a couple of teddies to remember us by and we said we would write to him and his foster parents could read them to him. He was very attached to Jorel and only just started to become attached to me, so it was good that the foster mom said we could write to him and send little drawings of us. He’s too little to understand what is going on. This is the first step to him having a forever home and a loving family.

Jorel and I really hoped that it would go well. We both know at our age being fostered and adopted is unlikely as they see the cuter younger children easier to manage then a teenager who has a lot of emotional baggage with them. Jorel didn’t like it, but I said one day that it would be way easier for him to be adopted then it would be for me. He knows deep down that it’s the truth, people rarely chose to adopt someone who has been as badly abused as I have been. I’m scared of a lot of things and they won’t like dealing with the constant night terrors that I get or the flashbacks. Even I feel like Caleb hates dealing with the flashbacks when the guys are not able to help me. Someone yelled at us through the window of their car and it triggered another flashback of my father yelling at me for leaving the apartment while they were out.

“It’s gonna be okay Danny, it’s okay,” I just about hear Caleb telling me. I wanted to rock in a corner, it helped me cope last time. I don’t think I am able to do that in a car. I feel the car coming to a stop and doors opening and closing. I felt Caleb’s arms around me and I felt safe. No one can harm me while he is here to protect me. I heard a car stop behind us and I got a little bit more frightened. I can just about hear what is going on around me even though all I can see is my father beating me in the living room. “Is everything alright here?” I hear a voice ask. Caleb rubbed my back as I buried my head into his shoulder. I need to calm down, I need this flashback to stop. I didn’t hear Caleb explain what was going on to the other person.

“That’s it Danny, take a deep breath for me buddy,” Caleb says, it has been a few minutes since the flashback first started and I have finally started to calm down. The other person is still here, I could hear them on the phone. Five minutes later, I am finally calm and see that it was a police officer who had stopped. They were almost about to call medics on me for help with my breathing. “I’m sorry,” I mumble, and Caleb heard because I was right by his ear. Caleb kept rubbing my back and looked to the officer. “It’s okay Danny. It wasn’t your fault, I know the flashbacks aren’t nice,” Caleb tells me. Then the police officer crouches down in front of me. He seemed concerned but now I am doing better he might relax.

“Is everything going to be alright?” the officer asks Caleb. We are safe on the road, there is little risk that Caleb or I could get hurt by a passing car. “Yeah, we’ll be alright now thank you,” Caleb says. The police officer makes sure that Caleb gets back into the car safely and we are back on the road. Caleb smiled at me. I felt so awful, I thought police officers only came when people are bad. “You’re not in any trouble Danny. The police officer was only there to make sure you are okay. You weren’t calming down easily and we needed to make sure that you didn’t need any medical attention,” he tells me. it’s happened once before, I couldn’t calm down and I passed out in the hospital and I woke up with an oxygen mask on which was scary.

“I’m not in any trouble?” I ask him, I wasn’t sure that I believed him that I wasn’t in trouble. Caleb puts his hand on my shoulder and looked at me while the light was red. “You’re not in any trouble buddy. Police officers don’t always stop bad guys. They are here to help people too,” he tells me. I still have a lot to learn about how the world works and what the emergency services are able to do and what their roles are. The first time I met a police officer was the day that I was rescued. I met the paramedics on that day too. My neighbours called the police because they heard me screaming. Then the ambulance was called, and I don’t remember much after that. The neighbours have seen me a few times when I have been home alone, and I found that the front door was unlocked.

“Right, let’s get you inside and upstairs. We’ve had quite the adventure today,” Caleb tells me. He’s right, we have been on an adventure. It was the first time I have ever been outside of either the apartment, the hospital or the lost boys home. It felt good though, I know despite the little hiccup on the way home that Caleb is still proud of me and I haven’t done anything wrong. I am still recovering from fourteen years of abuse, I have been told many times that it doesn’t fade away overnight and flashbacks and nightmares are common. Even the doctor told me that today, he also said if they got too bad they could give me some medicine to make them stop. I don’t like the idea of taking medicine though.

I sat on my bed when we got upstairs, and Caleb crouched down in front of me and took my hands in his. “Don’t worry Danny, I’m still proud of you. Considering you have only been with us for a week now you have done incredibly well. I know you will be able to keep this up, you’re my little super star,” he tells me, and I smile. This has been the best week of my entire life. I get that I don’t always act like a fourteen year old is supposed to, but I am taking things at my own pace. “Thank you, I don’t think anyone has been this proud of me before,” I tell him. I’m starting to get a little tired now, I know I am gonna fall asleep in a little while. “I know Danny, keep up the good work buddy,” he tells me, then he hands me my milkshake and then leaves the room.

George left his poem book in the room, Paradise Lost by John Milton. He said that as long as I took good care of it then I was able to read it for as long as I wanted. I picked it up carefully, Jorel joked the other day that I treated it like it was a fragile baby. I just didn’t want to rip the book and make George angry with me. The guys told me it was the only thing that he had from his dad, so I didn’t want to destroy that. I read half of it while I drank my milkshake before I realised that I was actually dozing off and carefully put the book down and the finished milkshake in the trash can. I lay back down in the bed and quickly fell asleep. At least I know when I wake up the guys will be back home from school. I miss them a lot.

Jordon p.o.v – 3.30 pm

We just got back from school, it has been a rough day because all of the teachers seemed to be in a bad mood and taking it out on all of us. Luckily Danny doesn’t have to experience that yet because he isn’t going to school for another two or three weeks I think. They want to make sure his reading and writing is up to the right standard first. I like coming back though, Danny is usually fast asleep, and I just lay with him for a while. It calms me down and Danny is happy to have the cuddles when he wakes up. I think Dylan is getting a little crush on the youngest. He looks at Danny the same way that Jorel does with Vanessa. George follows me to my room so if we want to have a quiet conversation while Danny sleeps we can.

Danny was fast asleep curled up on top of his blanket. No one can deny that he is an adorable guy. We all treat him like he is our little brother and I think he appreciates it. We are the first family that he has. “Caleb said he did good today, he had one flashback on the way home so he’s a little upset today,” George explains, he probably saw Caleb on the way up here. It does explain why Danny fell asleep in the position he has. I feel so sorry for him, he’s still struggling to deal with what happened to him. He didn’t deserve any of this. I lay next to Danny and watch as he rolls over and snuggles into me. He was fast asleep though. “It’s okay Danny, we are here,” I tell him. I don’t know if he is awake, but if he is, I know it’s nice for him to have the reassurance that he isn’t on his own.

He’s often been left on his own, then had bad things happen to him. That’s why we make sure that he is not on his own often. The only time he is alone is when he goes to the bathroom. Even then, he knows we aren’t that far away from him. It gives him peace of mind that everything is going to be okay and nothing bad is going to happen. I don’t think he will be able to completely believe that his parents aren’t coming back for him until he goes to their trial and hears that they have been sentenced to life in prison or something. “I think I might know what to get Danny for his birthday,” George says, it’s a long way until Danny’s birthday. It’s February now and Danny’s birthday isn’t until November. “What?” I ask.

“I think I know where to get another copy of this, he seems to like it a lot,” George says, showing me his copy of Paradise Lost. He’s right though, I have seen Danny read it at least once a day so far. I have even gotten him to read it out loud to me. He is very good at it, he has even started to try and read it in the same way George does. It’s how George gets good grades in poetry in school. “Yeah, Danny might like that. He always feels so bad about touching your copy because he doesn’t want to break it,” I tell him. I think George knew that already, he has told Danny a couple of times to not worry about it. Danny wakes up while we are talking, I could feel him looking at me. “Hello Danny, how are you?” I ask him, and he smiles at me.

“Hi Jordon, I’m okay now,” he replies. He looks at George and smiles. George sits next to us and Danny gives him a hug. George is definitely the big brother figure in Danny’s life. Well, the main one who is the problem solver for Danny. “Hi George,” Danny says, and George smiles. Dylan would be jealous that he isn’t getting these Danny snuggles. “I’m glad your okay now Danny. We know the flashbacks aren’t nice,” George says. Danny gets a little upset, like Caleb said he would be. We didn’t mean to make him upset. George does that technique where he asks Danny to point out the different colours in the room. It calms him down quickly, and I think Danny is quite embarrassed by what has happened.

“It’s okay to get upset Danny. No one expects you to be happy about what happened to you until now,” I tell him. George left and got a tissue for Danny who was on the verge of crying. “It’s going to be fine Danny,” George says and wipes a couple of tears away with his tissue. Poor Danny has not had an easy time lately. At least Aaron has learned his lesson and left Danny alone since the incident the other day. We have definitely stopped being friends with Aaron after that incident, we can’t condone the violence that he has used on people around him. George hugged Danny gently and soon we distracted the younger boy with all the silly things we could think of from the top of our heads to make him laugh a little bit.

Caleb came to check on us after a little while and then told us we are having Chinese take away for dinner. It’s gonna be Danny’s first time having it and we know some foods he’s probably going to like. Or we hope he’s gonna like. To be on the safe side, he’s gonna have crab and sweetcorn soup with egg fried rice and noodles if he choses to. He likes those things, well he likes noodles and rice since he has tried those before. The soup sounds good, it’s Jorel’s current favourite right now. We don’t know if he is going vegetarian or vegan right now. I guess we will have to see how it goes. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be crying,” Danny tells us. I hug Danny close again, our poor little bear. I hate it when he feels this way.

“You shouldn’t apologise Danny. You are fourteen years old, you have been abused for those fourteen years and you are fully entitled to cry you heart out to us. We are your friends and we are here for you and no one here is going to make fun of you for it,” I tell him, he smiles before wiping away his tears and hugging us both. We hug him back just as we noticed Dylan entered the room and he decided to hug Danny. I hope one day they can be together and a happy couple. “You’re more than just friends to me, we have known each other literally a week, but I feel like all of you have become brothers I have never had. I am still adjusting to all of this and knowing what feelings are okay and which ones are not okay and having you here regardless is a big help,” Danny says.

He is so adorable, I see why Dylan likes him so much. It does not feel like Danny has been in our lives for a week already. It feels like oddly enough he has been here this whole time when we all know he hasn’t. “I’m glad you see us as brothers Danny, we all love you like you’re our little brother. Just know this, whatever happens between now and the next four years, we are gonna be there to see you graduate high school,” George says and smiles at Danny. It’s true, we are gonna keep in touch with the others when we leave. George and Jorel leave next year when they graduate, then it’s me and Matty in two years then it’s Dylan and Danny together in four years. We are hopefully all going to live together in one house.

Caleb said when George and Jorel leave that we can go and spend some time with them in their house. The only limitations are we can’t sleep over there and we have to let him know the day before that we plan to spend a few hours there just, so he knows where we are and where to start looking if we don’t come back for whatever reason. “I met Mary today,” Danny says, I smile. I am super glad that he met Mary, she is the only old lady that I know who is kind to everyone regardless of their background. “That’s awesome, it was her that got me into all the war stuff. Hearing all of her stories about what went on in Word War Two is incredible,” George says. I think Danny feels the same way, he has probably heard some of the stories by now.

“Yeah, it seems like a totally different world, but it isn’t. Caleb took me for lunch after my doctor’s appointment and she was there. She was really nice,” Danny replies. I am pretty sure that Mary is related to Caleb in some way. I have just completely forgotten because Caleb is like in his 50s or 60s and Mary is in her 80s I have been told. She’s just not allowed to know that we know how old she is. You never ask a lady her age, she has always said that. She’s been teaching us how to be proper gentlemen and it’s paying off. The only person her techniques haven’t worked on is Aaron, but deep down we all knew it was unlikely that he would change. He always hated Mary from the day he met her.

Dinner went good, Danny enjoyed his food like usual. I swear you could probably put anything but peanut related food in front of him and he would eat it. It makes Caleb happy, it’s one less thing for him to worry about. The last thing he needs is to have several people who have issues with food right now. It rubs off on the little ones, they copy certain behaviours and it makes Caleb very frustrated. “Hey Jordon, mind if I stay with Dan tonight? I wanna spend more time with him,” Dylan asks, we are all walking to bed. “That’s fine, Dan won’t mind. I don’t mind either, he enjoys everyone’s company,” I tell him. Then I say goodnight to the younger two and climb into my bed before falling asleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And that is chapter four done, hope you enjoyed!


	5. Chapter 5

Woaah we’re halfway there… woahh living on a prayer.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jordon p.o.v

Today’s the day we’ve all been waiting for, Danny gets to start school for the first time. He is also in a relationship with Dylan, but they are taking it slow and working things out on their own. It has had a massive impact on Danny is a positive way. For the last week that they have been dating Danny has not had a single nightmare. Caleb lets Dylan sleep in mine and Danny’s room almost every night. In our future house they are going to have a bedroom to themselves and they won’t have to worry about me third wheeling. I peer over the side of the bed to see them snuggled up like usual, Danny with his plush firmly in his grip.

His recovery is going well, no one is expecting a miracle overnight when it comes to the healing the psychological damage that he has endured over his fourteen years of life. We are slowly working on getting sorry out of his daily vocabulary. Old habits die hard and he has had to apologise so often when he was with the people who made him. “Come on you two, we all have school today,” I tell the couple who just woke up while I was staring at them. I was kinda like Spiderman from here, it’s fun even if I do tumble out occasionally. Dylan wakes up first, Danny is more of a guy who loves his sleep. He loves to get some sleep when he can. “Morning Jordon,” Dylan says, looking up at me with a smile.

“Good morning Dylan,” I tell him, then he nudges Danny who lets us both know he is not happy to be awake right now. I wasn’t quite sure he was waking up though. He seems to be mumbling quite a fair bit. “Can you hear that?” Dylan asks me, I flipped over the bar of my bunk and landed on the floor. “Yeah I heard it from up there, I don’t know what he is saying though. Maybe I should get Caleb,” I tell him, Caleb knows how to decipher the mumbling, maybe he can help us. It’s getting quicker and Danny is getting more and more worked up over something. I look to Dylan and he probably mirrors my expression. “Yeah get Caleb,” Dylan says, and that was all I needed.

He’ll be downstairs with the other carers making sure the little ones eat. I run down the stairs, much to another carer’s dislike and almost ran straight into Caleb. “Are you okay Jordon? Do you need me for something?” Caleb asks, he saw me running and I probably look panicked. “No, Danny keeps mumbling and we don’t know what he is saying but he’s getting really upset,” I tell him, trying to let him know how urgent the situation was. “Okay come on. He might be having a flashback or something, today is going to be really stressful for him,” Caleb says, following me back up the stairs to the room I share with Danny and partially Dylan. Dylan was still there with Danny in his arms who was curled up and crying whilst mumbling.

It was not a good sight to see. It is worrying to see just how much damage was done. Caleb was there in an instant trying to bring Danny out of the flashback and reassuring him that it was not the life he is living anymore. It took him five minutes, but Danny eventually opened his eyes and saw the three of us looking at him. “It’s okay Danny, everything is fine now,” I tell him, and he doesn’t know what to do next until Caleb encourages him to go for a cuddle where the poor young lad breaks down in tears. Danny definitely has a good bond with Caleb and it’s slowly getting to the point where Danny will have that bond with us and we can help him more with his problems. “I’m sorry,” Danny says, it is still something that we are working on with him.

“It’s okay Danny, you go wash up then come down for breakfast,” Caleb says when he calms Danny down. He knows we can look after Danny from here and everything should be fine. He goes into my arms next and then into Dylan’s. Dylan kisses Danny on the top of his head and they did a mini dance in the bedroom just before Caleb left to supervise the fussy ones. He doesn’t mind coming up to help those in need. He does treat Danny like he is either his son or grandson, but Danny needs that kind of bond to help him recover properly. It has helped a bunch. I watch Danny leave the room then come back a minute later and it looked like he never cried.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Danny p.o.v

Well my first school morning is going great… not. I have already broken down and had a flashback just after I woke up. Dylan comes up behind me and rubs my shoulders. “It’s gonna be okay, you get to be with me all day and the others will be there for the break times,” Dylan tells me. They have all done so much to help me settle in here during my first month and I have no way to repay them back other than to hug them when I know they are feeling a bit stressed out. “I know, I am not too worried about school. I know you will look after me,” I tell him. There really was no reason for my horrible morning unless my body just decided that I was stressed out and needed one of the worst flashbacks I have ever had.

“Just as long as you let us know when you are not okay baby. I want to keep you happy,” Dylan says, I have to not blush. This whole relationship thing was new to the both of us, but at least we both agreed that we would work it out together at our own pace and only move on to the next step when we felt comfortable. All we have done so far is hug, hold hands in private and we have said I love you once. We felt if we said it often then it would lose all of it’s meaning. We have the cute couple nicknames though. “You always make me happy babe,” I tell him. It’s true, I have never had a reason to be angry, hurt or upset by anything they have done. Jordon was waiting so we could go to breakfast before we all gave Caleb a nervous breakdown.

By the time we made it down stairs Caleb had put three plates of breakfast in our usual spots. Caleb came over and gave me another hug. “Are you okay now Dan?” he asks me, and I nod. I do feel a bit better than I did when he was calming me down. “That’s good, you’re only going to do half days in school to start with like you’ve done here and then gradually you will be able to stay the full day every day,” Caleb tells me. I don’t feel like I am ready to do a full day in school yet, so it is great to know that he already thought ahead and worked on that with the school. I know I do the first three lessons and the break and then at lunch time I go home. The guys know about it too, so they won’t panic when I am not there with them at lunch time.

“Danny, you have a bit of food hanging out,” George says, he was already at the table when get got there and we had done our good mornings. I did have a bit of French toast hanging out, but then I ate it. “No I don’t,” I tell him, then he stuck his tongue out at me. We have a lot of fun messing around in the mornings. “It’s naughty to tell lies George,” Jorel says, trying to hide his laughter. He was aware of the joke going on, but one of the other teens wasn’t. I had just drizzled a lot of syrup on my French toast before this kid told a carer that George was telling lies. The carer ignored him because she saw Jorel laughing. She knows we joke around a lot anyway. “Greg, you’re such a tattletail,” she says. I pulled a face because I just had a mouthful of ketchup and syrup.

It was not a good combo that’s for sure. “What’s that face for?” Dylan asks me. I know Caleb is hyper aware of potentials for people to not like food and to suddenly become fussy and I was hoping Caleb hadn’t seen me. “Just had a mouthful of syrup and ketchup. I don’t think it is a good combination,” I tell him. It probably is the worst combination of food ever. “How on earth did you manage that?” Jordon asks me. I pointed to the small puddle of ketchup next to my French toast which I used for the meat and then the edge of the bread were there was ketchup on it and there was syrup on the top. “Makes sense, I thought you wanted to try a new combination so you put the ketchup on top of your syrup,” Jordon says. I shake my head, I would never do something like that. Well, maybe fish fingers and custard but that is it.

“You’re so odd Jordon,” George says, just as Aron walks past and I brace myself for impact. He loves shoving me into the table whenever we all have a meal together which is basically every breakfast time and dinner time. We all have lunch at different times on the weekends. Luckily Caleb was watching closely so Aron did nothing. “I’m not, Danny probably would try odd combinations. He’s still discovering food and stuff,” Jordon says. In his defence I probably would have done it purposefully at some point to see what it tasted like. “Fair enough,” George replies. I was done with my breakfast. I had left a bit, but Aron was making me nervous and I didn’t really want to eat anymore. I know Caleb is writing down how many calories I am consuming to make sure I am gaining enough weight to be healthy.

I excused myself from the table and went to go and calm myself down. I am nowhere near as panicked as before, but I just felt like I needed my own space for a moment and I know the others respect that. I was in the middle of getting dressed for the day when Caleb walked in. He did knock first just to let me know he was there. “Are you sure you’re okay to go to school today? We can always push it back another day or two,” he asks me, I could hear how worried he is for me. I turn around to face him and I smile. “I’m okay Caleb, I think I am fine to go school today,” I tell him, being honest. He knows I don’t like Aron. Our introduction was less than pleasant to say the least. My handwriting and reading skills are now where they should be for my age.

“Alright Danny, as long as you let me know if that changes,” he tells me. It was pretty similar to what Dylan has said this morning too. I hug Caleb and he hugs me back then he grabs my top from my shoulder and puts it on over the top of my head. I chuckled and put my arms through the sleeves and pulled it down. Then Caleb leaves to let me finish getting dressed and the other two walk in. Dylan got dressed in his room then walked in. Matt ignored us at breakfast which is odd, normally he says good morning and things. Then again he’s been busy with Austin since they are pretty close to each other. They aren’t really doing anything with the band at the moment other than mess around in the music room.

Aron always walks in and ruins the sessions that the guys try to have, and they have even tried to include me in them, I guess we could focus on it more when Jorel and George leave when they turn eighteen, they want to get a three bedroomed house for us all to live in. That is if we all want to share rooms by then. If I am still with Dylan by the time we both leave here then I would share a room with him. That’s what couples do I believe. We will have to wait and see though; four years is a long time and so many things could change between now and then. We might not even be friends by that point. We can’t predict the future. We just have to live day by day and see what happens.

Dylan spun me around and then hugged me tightly while Jordon was getting dressed. Dylan is already quite protective of me and I am not one hundred percent sure why. I know I am nothing special and I don’t really mean a lot to many people. “Can’t wait to have you sit next to me in the lesson,” Dylan says, just as Jordon finishes getting dressed. We have to get the school bus soon, so we might need to hurry up. I smile at Dylan, I can’t wait to spend more time with the guys. Especially Dylan. We get to spend more time now I do a half day in school. When I do a full day in school it will be a lot better. I rest my head on Dylan’s shoulder just as Jordon walks to where we are standing. “You two are seriously couple goals,” Jordon says.

Then we walk down the stairs. I know we have five more minutes before the bus arrives. Dylan has his backpack, Jordon has his too. I wonder where mine is. Caleb was waiting at the bottom of the stairs with my backpack. “I didn’t know if you wanted a specific one, but we had this one going spare with all the stuff you need inside,” Caleb says. It’s a plain red backpack, but I was happy with it. I am not a fussy person. Caleb has basically had to buy pretty much everything that I currently own, I had nothing of my own when I was rescued. I need to get a part time job or something and pay him back, there was no way that I was going to let him go by without repayment.

I take the backpack from Caleb and thanked him for it. “You’re welcome Danny. Tell you what, I’ll get you some patches of bands you like, and we can get them stitched on,” he says, seconds before the bus horn goes to let us know that he is outside waiting for us. I felt someone’s hands on my shoulders and I looked up to see that it’s George. “You guys look after Danny on the bus. I’ll see you at lunchtime Dan,” Caleb says. I think the bus driver has been made aware of my situation, well what he needs to know about it anyways. I know the guys will look after me, they have looked after me since the day I got here. I walk behind George and we leave to get on the bus. They do a headcount every morning, that’s what I have been told anyways.

“Nice to meet you Danny,” the bus driver tells me, when he sees me. He almost didn’t see me because I was hiding behind George. I give him a little shy wave, which I think he didn’t mind. “Hey George, you nearly hid that guy you’re so tall now,” the driver says, and we make our way to the seats. I get to sit next to Dylan, who holds my hand discreetly. The last thing I want to happen to him is for him to get bullied because people find out about our relationship before we want people to find out. It will be up to Dylan to decide when people should know. We might never reveal our relationship to the school. It’s all new to me, so I have no idea what to expect or what I think should happen or not. I rest my head on Dylan’s shoulder.

He doesn’t push me off, so I assume that I am doing something good. “He looks so sleepy,” George whispers, and I just about heard him. “Yeah, he had a rough wake up this morning,” Dylan whispers back. I didn’t mind them talking about me, because I know that they won’t say anything nasty about me. I don’t think George knows what happened this morning, Caleb didn’t make a big deal out of it because he respects us all. “You did Dan?” George asks me, and I nod. I have told him about most of my flashbacks already. He knows about the one I had this morning because I have had that flashback a couple of times before. “Yeah, had that flashback with the neighbours in it,” I tell him, very quietly.

Dylan doesn’t know about any of my flashbacks, I have been a bit nervous to tell anyone who isn’t George at the moment. When I feel a little bit more confident about my own recovery then I probably would tell the others or have George explain for me. George rubs my head gently and I smile. He always does things gently with me which is nice. He has never once been rough with me. “That’s not good buddy. At least you know now that he won’t hurt you anymore and neither will she,” George says quietly, then explains to Dylan quietly what the flashback was about and what I probably was mumbling during that time. Dylan hugged me tightly after George was finished. I definitely want George to explain in future.

He is so good at explaining things in the way that he knows the others are going to understand. “Poor Danny, no wonder he was upset this morning when he woke up,” Dylan says, I just snuggle into his side a little bit. No one around us was paying any attention which was the best case scenario for the three of us. I didn’t really want a bus full of strangers hearing my story. Apparently they are very judgemental about those who come from the lost boys home. It is not our fault that we are there, we were unloved, so the CPS took us to somewhere where we would be loved. They would feel differently if they were ever in our situation. That’s what Jordon told me, he also told me to ignore anyone being mean about that fact that we come from the lost boys home.

Dylan rubbed my shoulder as we got closer to the school. I was getting more anxious, but I know that my friends would look after me and make sure that I was safe from bullies and other mean people. “Don’t worry Danny, I will be with you until Caleb picks you up at lunch time,” Dylan tells me which makes me feel better. I know that I won’t be left on my own, I will have all of my lessons with Dylan because Caleb made sure that we would be together. “I know you will, I’m just worried about other things,” I tell him. Everything is going to be a new experience for me. I have never been in the high school before. I feel safe with Dylan next to me and I know that he will protect me from any danger.

We get off the bus and Dylan takes me to the office so that I can get my schedule and things. I will be going back there with Dylan when Caleb is going to pick me up at lunch time. I am excited to see what the day brings even though I am nervous about it at the same time. I stay close to Dylan at all times, I don’t want to get lost. He makes sure that I am behind him at all times too, I don’t think he wants to lose me either. We both make it to maths on time. Why maths has to be first thing on a Monday morning I have no idea. I heard some of the people in the class moan about it. I didn’t have to stand up and say my name and a few facts about myself which is good. The teacher wants me to do a test to see where I am at compared with the other students to see if I need a bit of a catch up or something.

This is the first time I have ever been to school, so they are all going assume that I am quite far behind compared with my peers. I can prove them all wrong though, I am quite smart at quite capable of being on the same level as Dylan and the others in the class. There is no reason for me to be behind. I can get help if I really need it as well. I do take my time like Caleb taught me and make sure that I answer all of the questions before turning my paper in. The teacher seemed very impressed when she first looked at it. She wanted to mark it straight away, I have never seen someone act like that before. Even Dylan looked stunned when I went back to the desk. “She never grades a paper this quick, you must have impressed her,” he tells me.

“Danny this is incredible, no previous schooling and you get one hundred percent on the paper. You’ll definitely do well in my class with grades like that,” she says, and I look to Dylan with a smile. I already got my first A* grade and I have only been in class for an hour. She gave me back the paper, I can show this to Caleb when he picks me up in a little while. “Danny’s very clever miss,” Dylan says, and she nods. “No doubt, this boy would go far in whatever he does after graduation,” the teacher says, I bet she will have made a copy of it to show her other teachers. All of this is weird, I should not be called smart or clever or anything positive. I am so used to being called an idiot, a retard and other things along those lines.

“Wait till George sees this, he’ll be so proud of you like I am,” Dylan says, we are walking over to our history lesson now. After history we have a break and then we have art before lunch and then I go home, and Dylan carries on with English and I forgot the other subject already. “Yeah, but I have you guys to thank for that grade. I had a lot of prep for school before today,” I tell him. Dylan says we are learning about world war 1 in class which is something I am already interested in, so I suppose I will do well in this class too. “Welcome to the class Danny, I hope you enjoy my lesson,” the teacher says. We only just started the topic and he had notes for me to copy when I get home and I kept up note taking today. He was impressed by how much I paid attention and focused. He also knew at the end of the lesson that I knew George Ragan and I had developed a love for history from him which he said was not a bad thing.

Dylan was so excited by the time we went to break he almost ran, if I was more confident then he probably would have done. George and the others were at a table outside waiting for the pair of us to arrive. I got plenty of stares and whispers about me. It was mostly that I was the new kid and some girls called me hot and cute. I don’t get why though, I’m just a normal fourteen year old with brown hair that is pretty boring. It’s not too long or too short or styled in any crazy way. “How did it go?” George asks me, and Dylan nudges me. “Pretty well, got my first graded test already,” I tell him, then I pass him the paper. He looks at it a few times before passing it to Jorel who wanted to look, then Matt and finally Jordon.

“Wow, that’s amazing. Told ya you were smarter than us,” Jordon says. I put the paper back in my bag before George pulled me into a hug. “He is very smart, I bet he’ll be teaching us a few things soon enough,” Jorel says, I hug George back. I definitely see my friendship with George as the brotherly type. He’s always checking on me more so than others would, and I always feel myself a little more inclined to go to him with any of my problems. “The history teacher loves him too. Especially since we mentioned you in the lesson while he asked about how Danny knew quite a bit about world war one already,” Dylan says, and George chuckles. Jorel just rolls his eyes, I think we all have the same history teacher by the sounds of it.

“Oh yeah, he will. He loves having students who pay attention and actually enjoy the lessons he teaches. He puts a lot of effort and research into every lesson, so he delivers all the accurate facts he can. It also helps when having transfers or new students during the year that they know a bit already, so he doesn’t worry about them falling behind. He takes good care of us,” George says. I could definitely see that in the notes he gave me today that I will be writing up tonight to make sure I stay at the same level as the others. I bet teachers love it when all of their hard work pays off. “He’ll probably mention me to you next time he sees you,” I tell George. That maths teacher has probably told all of her co-workers about my impressive performance in her lesson by now.

“Yeah, he’ll probably encourage me to keep sharing my passion for history with you too. It is a cheeky grade booster to be fair,” he says, then he explains that when he knows that we have a high interest in the subject he would give us extra credit work to give us the highest grade he can. I suppose if he does offer it you would be very stupid to turn down a free chance to make sure you pass a subject. We talk for a bit longer before we go to art when the bell rings. I am now more nervous for my last class of today. What if they make fun of me because my drawing skill might be more like a five year old child’s? “Don’t worry Danny, the teacher is very nice. She will only show the work to the others if she thinks it is really impressive,” Dylan says, well no pressure there then huh.

She welcomes me and reassures me that no one would see my artwork if I was uncomfortable with it. She also said she could print out photos that I could use as a reference. That’s good then, cause she’d be pretty shocked by my lack of knowledge of things. I have never seen a dog or a cat or even a rabbit outside of a child’s picture book. She asks us to draw a domestic animal and Dylan asks for a picture of a husky puppy for me and him to use as a reference and she gives it to us. I spend the lesson drawing it to the best of my capabilities. I thought my sketch looked awful, but the teacher seemed impressed. They all seem to be surprised by what I can do. She sat down next to me and picked up the drawing.

“This is amazing Danny, I know a bit about your history from the email we were all given before your arrival, so I won’t show this. Honestly I would have thought that you have been drawing for years not a few weeks. We’ll be continuing to work on your skill while you are here, and you’ll be a pro artist in no time. Your artwork could probably even make money in the future,” she tells me, and I thank her. I am glad she has been honest with me too. I guessed there was a letter or email made to say a very abused boy would be joining and he might need assistance settling in and things. She told me art can be very therapeutic and it might help me. She doesn’t expect me to draw what happened to me in lessons, but if I did it at home then there might be more of an understanding of how I felt to be in that position.

Soon Dylan and I start walking towards the office where Caleb is waiting for us. I was kinda sad it was over so soon, but also kind of glad because I was very tired, and I knew I was not ready for a full day of school just yet. Caleb smiled when he saw us, he signed me out already, so we could just leave. “See you later Dyl,” Caleb says, and we wave. Caleb wraps his arm around my shoulder and we walk to his car. He does have a minibus, but he doesn’t need it since he is only picking me up. “Did you have a good first day Dan?” he asks me, and I nod. He knows I am tired. I showed him the maths paper, he was the only person who wasn’t shocked because he did that bit of schooling with me already. I told him about how my other lessons went too.

“That’s good Dan, I will admit your maths teacher called me earlier and said you did really well in her lesson. I didn’t know it was an A star though, well done dude. She even said you might be too smart for the level she teaches and when you’re settled in full time she might send you to a different class to give you more of a challenge,” he says, I was eating the packed lunch in the car. I can see that being a thing in the future though, only time will tell. I might be very good at maths now, but that might not be the case in a couple of months. Caleb said that I was going to be allowed to go straight to my room when I get home and get changed and take a nap. I can do the occasional full days without a nap, but at the moment I think it’s needed.

I managed to sleep right through until about half an hour after the guys came home from school. I knew that because Dylan was holding me carefully and they were talking about the lessons I missed. “Hey little lion, sleep good?” he asks me, I had been staring at him for about a minute before he noticed I was awake. I nodded, then stretched and hugged him tightly. I smiled at George who smiled back. “You were right, Mr Morgan did mention you to me. He was so excited to have someone so young interested in history and that I could help you out too,” George says. Dylan and I are both in 9th grade since it was my fourteenth birthday a few months ago. I am the youngest in my class for sure since I don’t turn fifteen until November when we will be in 10th grade.

Aron caused a fight at dinner, he shoved me over the table and was about to start punching me. George came in and grabbed him by his shirt and almost literally threw him out of the room. I was in a bit of shock, but by the time Dylan came to check on me I knew I hadn’t gone into a flashback. He pulled me to my feet and I was checked over by Caleb before going back to finish my dinner. Aron got sent to the cool off room and Caleb was muttering about how he wished the housing thing would hurry up, so he could get Aron out of here. He could come back though because his mates are still here and there isn’t much Caleb could do about that. After dinner Caleb announced that it was teen movie night and we should all go to the cinema room.

The little ones were happy in the playroom until their bedtime. We start watching the Harry Potter films since we have a mixed age range and Caleb has to pick a set of films that would be suitable for all. If we didn’t like the film then we could leave the room if you wanted to. I like the films, I know Jordon and George don’t, so they left the room. I thought Dylan was uncomfortable, but he stayed with me until I got too tired. “You don’t like Harry Potter do you?” I ask him. We are walking to bed now and Dylan needs to get changed too. “It depends on the film. The first two I don’t really,” he tells me and I kinda feel bad. He didn’t have to stay with me if he didn’t want to. “You didn’t have to stay,” I tell him as he gets changed.

He wraps his arms around me when he is done, and I stand on my tiptoes to rest my head on his shoulder. “I wanted to stay, that was technically a bit of couple time for us. I love spending time with you. I didn’t like the films, but I liked watching you experience this amazing world for the first time,” he tells me. I smile, and we lay in bed together and I snuggle up with him. Jordon was already fast asleep in his bed. “Goodnight Danny,” Dylan tells me. “Goodnight Dylan,” I reply.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And that is the end of another chapter, I hope you enjoyed!


	6. Chapter 6

Hope you enjoy this story!

This is an AU and in this AU they don’t have siblings even though I think all their siblings are amazing!

What do you guys think of Psalms now it’s out? I love the new stuff. So much so I am going to use some of Something To Believe in this.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Danny p.o.v

It’s been a few months since I started school and I’m doing a lot better than I thought I was going to. Dylan and the others have been really supportive of me and my recovery and I barely have any nightmares now. The flashbacks don’t get me as frequently either which is a blessing for me. I had one in the middle of a lesson on my first week of school and Caleb got called to explain it and come pick me up a little earlier. “Shh, let Danny enjoy his sleep. It’s Saturday and we don’t have school,” I hear Dylan whisper to someone. I’m snuggled into his side and I’m just enjoying being half awake. I will probably fall back to sleep in a minute. “Yeah, sorry,” I hear Jordon whisper back and I manage to fall asleep without them knowing that I was awake during that.

“Hey Dan,” Dylan says, quietly because I had somehow managed to wake up with a massive migraine. Well, I am not sure if he knows that yet. I bury my head into his chest and try and ignore all of the pain in my head. He rubs my back and I can hear some urgent whispers between him and someone else. I felt really dizzy and nauseous at the same time. “Dylan I need bathroom,” I tell him, and he supports me as I manage to somehow navigate my way to the bathroom with some help. As soon as I got to the bathroom I threw up which made my headache worse. “Where is he?” I hear Caleb ask and Jorel told him that I was in the bathroom. I felt someone touch my back and I flinched but soon calmed down.

“Aw Danny, Jorel told me you’re not feeling so good?” Caleb asks me, and I nod. I try and explain how I currently feel, and I was glad Dylan heard me, so he could explain it better to Caleb. I shuddered and threw up again and felt someone rub my back again. “It’s gonna be okay Danny. Let’s get you back to bed,” Caleb tells me, when we think I am not going to throw up again. I get given a bowl anyway. I lie down in bed and Caleb puts his hand on my forehead. I hated the light because it made my headache worse. Dylan closed the curtains and Jorel sat with me on the bed. “Just rest Danny, you’ll feel better in a little while,” Caleb tells me and leaves the room. I can’t have pain medication until I can keep some water down.

“Poor Dan, at least you got it on the weekend,” Jorel says, everyone in this home has had the 24 hour stomach bug and I think I am one of the last few to get it now. The rest of the guys have had it by now and I helped look after them, so I suppose I was waiting for this to happen. “Yeah, it is awful though. Don’t think I was ever sick as a young kid,” I tell them, feeling more open about admitting what happened in my past now. Jorel and Dylan only know what I have told them so far. I haven’t been that open yet. “Yeah, I can see that. You were sheltered from the outside world which means you weren’t really exposed to germs. Now you are in here you’re gonna get sick a lot like we do,” Jorel tells me.

“Oh yeah, forgot to warn you about that one Danny. You’ll build up a super good immune system soon enough and you won’t be as sick as often,” Dylan tells me. I get that, I have been given supplements every day to give me a good immune system, but I haven’t been on them long and not expecting amazing results this early on. Maybe when I have been on them for a while they will really give me the benefits that will make it all worth it. “It’s fine honestly. I’m not about to say that being sick is beneath me because it is just a part of life,” I tell them. I am surprising myself by talking this much with the migraine and the rest of the symptoms I have. At least the rooms seems to have stopped spinning now.

Jorel cracked up, it’s not the first time I have managed to make him laugh without really trying. Dylan lays next to me and I rest my head on his chest. “I wonder if Kings and Queens of old times ever thought that throwing up was beneath them,” Jorel says, and I shrug. I don’t really know what the kings and queens did. I barely know anything about history of British Monarchs. “It is better to ask George those kinds of questions. Danny has enthusiasm for history, but he’s still learning a lot,” Dylan tells him. I yawn, I am still kinda tired as well as sick. Today’s just going to be a day where I sleep a lot I think. Dylan and Jorel don’t mind, they can talk together while I sleep and keep an eye on me if they so wish.

I did fall asleep and when I woke up the others were in the room. The curtains were still closed which was good because my migraine didn’t leave during my nap. Dylan is asleep next to me and I saw George half sitting half laying next to my other side. “Hey Dan, do you wanna try drink something? Then we can make that headache go away,” George asks me, keeping his voice quiet. I nod, it did make my headache a little worse, but I was getting thirsty. When I woke up I didn’t get to eat or drink anything. If I can keep the water down then I get to take pain meds and possibly eat a biscuit. I am not sure yet, I guess I have to see how I feel first before making any decisions. I saw Matt get up and then hands George a bottle of water.

Dylan is still sleeping, so I am going to try and move as little as possible, so I don’t wake him up accidentally. “Thanks Matt,” I tell the curly haired one. “You’re welcome Dan,” he tells me. He also smiles at me and I take the time to enjoy being around the people who really care about me. George helps me take my first sip of water. I liked how it soothed the burning in my throat. I knew I had to be careful and take it easy in case my stomach decides to reject it. “Maybe once we know everyone isn’t going to get sick any time soon we could do our first band practice and include Danny in it,” Jorel suggests. I knew from the day I heard about the five guys around me that they dreamed of being in a band. They have heard me sing and play guitar before, so it felt nice to be included. “Yeah that would be good, what do you think Dan?” Jordon asks.

“I think it is cool, I’m a little surprised you want me to be involved but I’ll do it,” I tell him. George wraps his arm around me and hugs me. They know I am still nervous and paranoid about people leaving me and they are accepting of it and making me know that I am going to have company. “Of course we want the super Danny in our band. You are really talented, and we want you,” Jorel tells me. I smile at him. Of course they did, it’s just my brain sometimes likes to tell me that everyone hates me despite the fact that they are all in here to take care of me while I am sick. I took care of them while they were sick, and I knew that when I eventually got the same thing they had that they would look after me.

It was weird though, it’s been nearly six months now since the police found me in the apartment and I am still adjusting to people actually caring for me and it wasn’t all fake or all a lie. “I know, I am still finding all of this weird to adjust to even now,” I tell him. I like being honest with them because they help me figure out why I am feeling this way and ways that I can deal with it. I’m also hoping this migraine goes away soon. “Yeah, we get that. You still haven’t quite experienced everything we have, so you will find it weird. A good example would be that today is the first time that you have ever been really unwell and having people taking care of you, so it would feel weird. You’ll get used to it eventually, all these things take time,” Matt says, they don’t judge me for holding Chester the panda close to my chest.

He brings me a lot of comfort when I am alone. George is also comforting me just by being close to me like Dylan is even though my boyfriend is still sleeping. I think he worries about me a lot, he is always relieved to see me in the morning and always hugs me tightly when it has been nights where we haven’t shared a bed. I knew Matt was right, it is going to take a long time before we manage to undo fourteen years of physical, mental and sexual abuse and I’ve got to accept that. I can’t rush my own recovery no matter how embarrassing it gets at times. Jordon decides he’s going to get Caleb, so I can have some medicine now I have proven I can keep some water down.

“Hey Dan, how are you feeling now?” he asks, and I straight up give him a thumbs down. Despite how much I was conversing with the others I still felt as rough as I did when I woke up this morning and I was glad the room was still dark. Caleb takes my temperature and gives me the pills to swallow. I hated how they tasted, but I have been told medicine isn’t always supposed to taste good. “That’s gonna sort your headache and your fever out. It’s gonna be a rest day for you and if you feel up to it later we can make you some soup or something,” Caleb tells me, he definitely has a close bond with me. Food does sound good, but at the same time it really doesn’t. He walks out just as Dylan wakes up. “Good nap there Dyl?” Jordon asks.

“Yeah, is Dan okay?” he asks, I think he expects me to still be sleeping right now even though if he looked to his right he would see that I was awake. “Apart from the stomach bug I’ve got I’m fine,” I tell him, and he smiles. He is a protective boyfriend, but not too overly protective and I like knowing that I have someone looking out for me all the time. “That’s good bear, I guess it’s a lazy day today right?” he asks. I don’t know why he was so tired, maybe I can ask him and find out in a little while. “Yeah, it is for all of us if we want. Are you feeling okay Dylan?” George asks, he is the most protective of everyone in this room. He always looks out for us and makes sure that we know that we can talk to him whenever we need to.

“Yeah, Aron’s been keeping me up at night that’s all,” Dylan admits, and I hug my boyfriend. Aron has really turned on them and I think I am to blame for it. Dylan hugs me back and kisses me on the top of my head. “That idiot will never learn. I think we’ll have to make Caleb aware of it. It’s no one’s fault though, he used to do it a long time ago, but I got a different room, so I could actually sleep at night,” George says. The it’s no one’s fault part was definitely aimed at me. He knows some of my thought processes and one of them is to assume guilt whenever something happens, and it involves Aron. Maybe I shouldn’t have read that dictionary at three am the other night. I know a lot more words now but have no clue if I am using them in the right contexts.

“George is right, Aron’s never gonna learn. One day reality will kick him in the ass and he will know that he has lost everyone he has cared about, and it will be a very miserable life for him,” Jorel says. He was one of the closest people to Aron when they were still friends. He took it hard at first but now he doesn’t really care too much about what happens to Aron. He just wants to get on with his life and let Aron continue down the self-destruction path he has set himself on. It’s safe to say everyone has that opinion of Aron now. “Yeah, you can stay with Dan if that helps you sleep better,” Jordon suggests. He is still happy to have us together in the same room as him. He won’t be able to have Aron bother him then.

“Might do that actually,” Dylan says, making me smile. I know why he wants to do it, other than to get away from Aron. He wants to spend more time with me, in school some of the classes I have were changed so I was in a different class than Dylan for Maths and English, reducing how many classes we have together now. I enjoy spending time with Dylan anyway, so if the opportunity arises then I was going to gently encourage him to take it. “Good, you need to look after yourself too,” George says. I was starting to get tired again, so I cuddled up with Dylan and Chester and fell asleep again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Two weeks later

“I can’t believe Aron is going around saying he fucked your sister,” Jordon tells Jorel. Jorel shakes his head, we all heard the rumours this morning in school. “I thought you didn’t have a sister Jay?” I ask, purely confused. “I don’t, just leave him to his odd fantasy,” Jorel says, feeling very annoyed by the whole thing. George is ready to defuse the tension and stop any fights. I was sitting on the table snuggling up to Dylan, like Jordon was doing with Matt. They are together now after I helped them realise they had feelings for each other. “It will all come out that it is a lie, we could even start an embarrassing rumour about him,” Jordon says, all up for getting revenge on Aron. Jorel wasn’t so sure, but this was a personal attack on him.

“What could we use though?” Matt asks, looking at his boyfriend. I had no idea what they were going to do, but I was willing to support my friends through this. They have done so much for me after all. “I’m sure we can think of something embarrassing enough. We just have to plan this carefully,” Dylan tells them. At least they know what they are doing. I have no idea what they are going to do, but I will just watch it unfold in front of me. “Do we have to do this?” Jorel asks, feeling uncomfortable. I go over to him and hug him since that was the only thing I could do. Jorel hugs me back and I sit in between him and Dylan. I was just trying to make everyone happy as best as I can. I don’t really know what to do though.

“It’s completely up to you Jorel. Just know that we all have your back no matter what. This is disgusting that he decides to make these rumours and they involve you,” Jordon says. I think Jorel appreciates it. He wouldn’t let this sort of thing happen to anyone else. I would hate for him to make another rumour about me. He’s already done it back home and I have a sneaking suspicion that I am going to be the next target. I look, and I see one of Aron’s mates standing there and then Aron there and there are a whole bunch of people standing around. I was on the defensive, I’m going to protect my friends no matter what it takes. “So Jorel how does it feel to know I fucked your sister?” Aron asks, and I see Jorel get fists.

I have an idea. “You fucked his sister? Don’t you mean you fucked your own pillow considering there is no chance in hell that you would ever get laid with that horse ass face of yours,” I say, completely out of the blue and managing to show him up in the process. Jorel was stunned as was everyone else around us. I used air quotes around “his sister” because I knew Jorel doesn’t have a sister. “Jorel doesn’t even have a sister you idiot,” Dylan chimes in. Aron was about to punch me in the face but one whisper from his mates made him storm off dramatically. I smile at Jorel as the crowd disperses, there is nothing to see now. I hope what I said will circulate around the school as much as the original rumour did.

“Wow, who are you and what the fuck did you do to the little shy Danny? Thank you” Jorel says, and we hug. The others were still shocked by what I had just done. George was trying to say something, but all he could do was open and close his mouth. “You’re welcome Jay. I couldn’t let him try and provoke a reaction out of you, so a viral video can be made,” I tell him. I knew one of the outcomes would have been Jorel and Aron fighting each other and it ending badly. I rest my head on Dylan’s shoulder for the rest of lunch break while they try and process what happened. A girl came up to the group. “Is it true Aron fucks his own pillow at night?” she asks. I nod. “Yeah he totally does. We should know cause we all live together,” George says. She walks away and George smiles at me.

“Good job Danny. We’ll defend you when Aron turns on you,” he tells me, and I nod. I know that he will try and spread some shit about me. It’s obvious that is what he is going to do, he is so predictable. “Thanks. It’s stupid that we know he’s gonna go after me next. That’s partly why I did what I did, cause I knew I was going to be next either way,” I tell them. He’s wanted to beat me up again for so long, but we have always been separated or I have been well defended so he can’t get to me. Dylan hugs me tightly, he doesn’t want me to get hurt. “Yeah, he’s not gonna get you tonight at least. We are practicing in the music room which Caleb said we could lock,” George says, which makes me feel more comfortable.

I have been working on something, a few bits of lyrics that hopefully can be turned into songs and I can show them one of the songs I am more confident in showing the part I have written. The other songs can wait for another time where I feel more confident and I know what our style is going to be. Their writing style could be totally different to mine and that makes me a bit nervous for what is going to go down after school. They may hate what I have to show them and suddenly not want me in the band anymore. There are so many thoughts just running through my head and I don’t quite know how to deal with them. Dylan nudges me when it is time to go and we walk to our next lesson together. We only have one other lesson after that and then we get to go home.

“What were you thinking about?” he asks me, I heard a few hushed whispers about Aron fucking his pillow which was good and none of Jorel and his “sister”. “Just a little worried about tonight that’s all. I have a song to show you guys, but I don’t have much of it and I don’t think it is very good,” I tell him. He’s always helped me when I have suddenly become more anxious and unsure what to do next. I won’t show him until tonight though, maybe I can get him to see first and then he can share it with the guys. “I’m sure it will be great Danny. You have a very imaginative brain in there and you could make so many good songs,” he tells me, gently tapping on my head as we reach our science class. It’s one of the few I have with him now.

Science is definitely one of my weaker subjects, it has taken me longer to understand it than any of the other subjects I have had so far. Dylan and the others have tried their best to help me, but I think it’s just one of those subjects that will take longer no matter how hard I try. The science teacher was not impressed with my last test performance. I got a B, but he was expecting his whole class to get A and above. I was pretty impressed considering how bad I am at science and it was my first big test on it. Dylan smiled when he saw my score. I could see the teachers disappointment from here. There is nothing he can do though, I have no parents to call and Caleb knows I am trying my hardest. He can’t really yell at me or anything.

The lesson went well, I am starting to get more of an understanding, but I know I will still struggle. The teacher wanted to talk to me at the end of the lesson, so Dylan decides to wait outside the room for me before our last lesson of the day. “Daniel, how are you finding the lessons?” he asks me, he can’t really complain about my score. If I was getting consistent D or E grades then it would expected for me to be moved to another class, but I am doing well. “Alright, there are some I struggle with, but this is my first time having any sort of schooling,” I tell him. I was moved class shortly after I joined because I was too smart for the other class. I don’t think this teacher got the same memo as everyone else.

“Oh really, all I was made aware of that you were a transfer student. You don’t have to tell me anything if you are uncomfortable. Now I know that I do apologise if I have come across as rude. You have done extremely well in my class,” he tells me, it was nice of him to apologise and I felt calmer about talking to him. “I come from an abusive background, I spend all my time in one room until I was rescued. I never knew what school was until recently,” I tell him. I didn’t want him to feel sorry for me, I just wanted him to understand why I was so new to schooling. He was shocked, he definitely did not know about me until I told him. “Oh my god, you poor thing. Just talk to me whenever you need to,” he says and then lets me go to the next lesson with a note to explain why Dylan and I are now ten minutes late to the lesson.

That lesson went fine. The bus home was interesting cause halfway through the journey a chant started about Aron and how he fucks pillows and dreams about a sister that doesn’t exist. Jorel felt happier than he did at lunch time and we sat pretty close to each other on the ride home. The bus driver just let it happen, he didn’t like Aron either apparently, so the revenge was welcome. “What’s Caleb going to say?” I ask, a little nervous but trying to stay calm. I don’t really think Caleb is going to tell me off too bad. “Nothing, he’d be proud that you’re coming out of your shell and Aron deserved that anyways,” Matt tells me quietly. I guess that’s true, I am becoming braver and more willing to speak out to defend my friends.

When we got home, Caleb did want to speak to me and Jorel. It was only to get our side of the story cause Aron rushed in and snitched on me. “I’m not gonna tell you off Danny. In this case it was the right thing to do and also well done for coming up with something so clever to turn the attention off Jorel and onto Aron himself,” Caleb says, Jorel was grinning. He knew I was not going to be told off by Caleb and I know myself that I have to be cautious about when I make rumours about people anyway. I know when not to say things which will get me in trouble. We have dinner and then head the music room where we will be until movie time I have been told and if we don’t want to watch the movie then we are welcome to come back.

I take some time to observe the guys practice and see what their style is going to be like and how I can fit into that. I am doubting that I can fit it, but I am going to try my best anyways. Dylan was the first to notice that I was just sitting and watching them do their thing. He comes to sit next to me and I snuggle up with him. “You okay babe?” he asks me, and I nod. I was working on the lyrics I had started before. I saw the curiosity in Dylan’s eyes, but he didn’t do anything. He wasn’t being nosy and trying to read what I had. “Alright, you know you belong with us right? I want you to feel comfortable with us,” he tells me. He did whisper that, we didn’t really want to worry the others with my little doubts and fears.

“Yeah, I know. Just not really feeling it right now. I have a bit of a song, but I have no idea what I am doing or if I am any good,” I tell him. I am going to show him, just like before and see if he will suggest it to the guys. I don’t think it is going to be on the album they wanna do first. I know they had some songs with Aron and Jeff done. Jeff left a few years back. He hates Aron just as much as the rest of us do. “Well, can I see what you wrote so far? Then we can ask the guys what they think,” he asks me. I am reluctant, but I hand over my little song writing notebook to Dylan who is so careful with it. He has my permission to read the whole thing if he wanted to. It was not private really, I was just going through low self- confidence at the moment.

I was waiting nervously as Dylan started looking through the book from the beginning. There are not a lot of songs in the book to be fair. I haven’t managed to write a full song yet. I have a few ideas, but I keep scrapping them or getting too worried about the reception of it, so I stop writing. Dylan got to the song I was most worried about, I don’t think that it fits with the overall theme the band are going for with their songs. They seem to be a mixture of dark and party songs and I want this song to offer hope. Like the hope that I have for life now I have been rescued. He looks to me and I give him a nervous smile. “These are a lot better than you give yourself credit for Danny. We should show this one to the guys,” he tells me, and I smile.

The one he was referring to is called Something to Believe. As I got to know the guys more I was thinking that I could write something for George to rap during it. I have no idea how this song will go though. I hadn’t even thought of a melody. “Thanks Dylan,” I tell him. Then there was a gap of silence when we listened to the others talk about calling the album Swan Songs or Swan Jams. Jordon was all for both, he said we could call the first album Swan Songs then the next one would be Swan Jams. When they asked me I just shrugged, I have no idea what I am doing, and I’d rather not make any risky decisions right now. They asked if I had anything to show them and I was really reluctant to show them Something to Believe, but Dylan was all for it.

“He does have something, he’s a bit nervous about it though,” Dylan says, bringing all the attention to my little notebook. I show them, they all seemed impressed so far. I get the notebook back and I nervously await their verbal reaction. “It’s really good Danny, it will be a good chorus to go with some verses I have in mind already,” George says, and I smile. It felt good to have the guy I wanted to collaborate with on the song have ideas already. “What do you want it to sound like?” Jorel asks me. All I can do is shrug, I have not thought that far. I try and think about what I want the song to sound like. “I don’t know yet, something good I hope,” I tell him, really showing that I don’t know what to do.

I sing what I hope the chorus to sound like at least.

Give me something to believe in

Do you suffer just the same?

Just give me something to believe in

As the world walks away

Is it too much to take?

Is it too much to say?

So, as long as I am breathing

I need something to believe in

“Oh wow Danny, you sing like an angel. I can definitely see how that will go,” Jordon says and Dylan hugs me closely. I smile at him and the others are quick to agree that I sound like an angel. We practise some harmonies together before the movie night. We all agreed to go to bed after the movie and not practise anymore tonight. Aron was there, he knew we all had to be there. He got up in my face and pushed me over right away. I landed harshly on my ass and George almost punched him in the face. Jorel and Jordon were also on the defensive. “Aron just fuck off will ya,” I say as I get back onto my feet. Dylan moves behind me so that he can catch me if I get shoved over again. Man I do not have any patience with Aron today do I?

It turned out to be a shitty argument which did end up in a punch up. I managed to knock him straight to the floor before George pulled me back. He just infuriates me so much, it was almost like I was back at the apartment and my father was there teasing me until I punched him in the face. “George go take Dan to the kitchen to cool of a sec. I’ll be there once I deal with this prick,” Caleb says, and I almost calmed down right there and then. I know he won’t hurt me for that, he’s too nice. George did as he was told, and I was sitting on the kitchen counter. “He got you good in a couple places, but you’ll be fine,” George tells me. Then Caleb walks in. “You alright Dan?” he says, and I nod fearfully.

“Hey, nothing’s gonna happen. Aron is a complete douchebag and he had that coming. You were just defending yourself,” he says, then touches one of the bruises forming on my eyebrow. I hated all of this, the fight for life again and all the memories that stupid bastard keeps making my brain bring up. George rubs my shoulder before grabbing the frozen peas and placing it on the bruise. “I know, it just took me back to the time where my dad would make me fight him and lose every single time,” I tell them, finally revealing a little more of my past in hopes of recovering from it. I was exhausted and just wanted to go to bed. Caleb excused both Dylan and I to bed and I managed to quickly fall asleep in his arms. I love how much this boy is here for me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And that is the end of another chapter! (totes didn’t write one shot first) Hope ya enjoyed.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7/10 let’s goo

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Danny p.o.v

Dylan’s taking me out to have a little lunch date. We usually get have to stay at home during weekends, but Caleb is giving us permission to go and explore a little bit of Los Angeles as long as we are both home by dinner. I am feeling more confident within myself and I haven’t had any flashbacks for a couple of weeks. I am hoping to have some fun with Dylan and just relax. We aren’t allowed to leave the home without permission to keep all of us safe. We have the permission so if someone feels the need to comment on us leaving the house they can just go ask Caleb who will say that we had the permission to leave. As I have learned people will cause trouble over the smallest of things which does get annoying.

I am all ready for the day, I just have a plain black t-shirt on with a denim jacket over the top and some ripped skinny jeans. I don’t want to go too fancy because it’s just a simple date. I haven’t seen Dylan, yet this morning and I am really nervous for it. I want everything to go well and I want this to go right. I know Dylan doesn’t really care much about these things other than he wants me to experience the best life possible after my childhood. I want this relationship to go right, it’s my first relationship and there is so much that could go wrong. If we were to break up then everything would be ruined, and I don’t want that. “Danny, relax buddy. There is nothing to worry about,” George tells me, and I feel his hand on my shoulder.

“I don’t want to mess this up George,” I tell him, speaking very quietly I was surprised he heard me so well. He takes me to sit down on the bed and I hug him. Fuck these panic attacks and anxiety attacks man, they suck. “I know you don’t Dan. I don’t see how you could mess it up because Dylan loves you so much,” George tells me, and I know that Dylan loves me a lot. It’s just hard for my brain to realise that when I am in the middle of a panic attack like this. I haven’t had one for so long, so I am really disappointed now. I thought I was doing so well in my recovery mentally and this has just burst that bubble. “I know, my brain likes to mess things up,” I tell him. George has been so helpful with the mental issues I’ve been having.

“I know Danny, but the issues that you have with your own self confidence and things which will not heal itself overnight. All we can do is talk about what is going on and work our way through it, then we can see how we can make it right and we can enjoy the rest of the day,” George says, and I relax a little bit. He’s amazing at this sort of thing, I really think that he should become some form of support worker when he’s old enough to consider those career choices. George was keeping me relaxed when Dylan walked in, he was worried at first, but the smile I had on my face relaxed him. “Hey, are you ready to explore the world of Los Angeles?” he asks me, and I nod. I know we won’t be able to see all of it in one day, but I will appreciate any time I get to spend with Dylan away from Aron.

Aron has started harassing us during times where we are at the home. I freaking hate this, he can’t leave us alone to be happy. He doesn’t know we are dating, George encourages me to be very cuddly with all of the guys to throw him off that trail. It has also been helping a huge amount with my recovery, whenever I feel anxious I just go and hug one of the guys and I feel a lot better afterwards. It makes Aron none the wiser to what is really going on. After the whole ‘I fucked Jorel’s sister’ incident he has been ruder to all of us but Jorel and I more so than the other four. That was because Jorel was the main target and I fought back which also made me a target even though he hates my guts already because I’m the new kid everyone loves and feels sorry for.

I’m not keen on being the one that everyone has a pity party for, I still think my situation is normal even though when I explained my story in full detail to the police, Caleb and the guys they all seemed pretty shocked that the two people that were supposed to be the most caring were so cruel for the duration of my life. George and the others understand because it’s all I know what a parent is and all I will know unless I get fostered or adopted which is highly unlikely giving my current circumstances. No one wants to adopt someone who has such a broken past. That I know just by the fact that when parents come here they don’t give the older kids a chance and they go for the younger ones who have been through less.

I also had one potential foster placement only last a couple of days. We all agreed with Caleb when he said I should try and experience a normal home life while I am still in my early teens. He said it would benefit my recovery, but the main issue now is finding someone to take me in long enough to have that experience. I feel like because Caleb has to explain what happened it would make them think twice about taking me in. George said he would happily take over the father role for me if he was able to. Unfortunately he isn’t old enough and the age gap between us would make it a little strange. If he was in his 20’s or 30’s by now it would be totally fine, and we would all be out of here. That’s just wishful thinking at this point in time, we are not going to leave this place until we turn 18.

“Right, let’s go and explore some LA,” Dylan says, and he takes my hand. I hold it briefly as we don’t really hold hands often around the house. It’s mainly so the other teens don’t make fun of us. Caleb is driving us into town, giving us money and a time and place where he is picking us up from. Since this is my first time exploring like this, he wants to make sure that I am safe. He has also given me a mobile phone to call him should I need him for anything and if I am upset and want to come back home. Caleb puts his hand on my shoulder and we go into the car to head into town. Jorel and George are going to practice music with Jordon and Matt while we are gone. They really want to make the something to believe in notes I made into an actual song.

It blows my mind, that they think that my song is actually worth something. Dylan always said that my songs are amazing, and they are worth something. I am glad that I have such supportive friends like that, they have been really helpful when I have been doubting myself. I can’t wait to explore Los Angeles with Dylan now, it is going to be a lot of fun. I am going to take my time and relax with him while we go shopping. I am tempted to buy Caleb a little gift to say thank you for giving me the best second chance that anyone can get. They don’t realise how much my life was in danger until I was saved and now I get to enjoy life like any normal teenager should do. I really owe Caleb a lot to have been able to get settled into a normal life so quickly.

“Right you two, behave yourselves and have fun. Meet me back here at about four o’clock? If you want to come back earlier just text or call me,” Caleb says, and I nod. He gives us the money and we get out of the car and start making our way to one of the shops. I smiled as Caleb drove off, it’s 11 am right now and that gives us 5 hours to explore Los Angeles as much as we want. I am a bit nervous, but I know that I have Dylan who will look after me. If I get too upset then he can call Caleb who will come and calm me down and take me home if I need to. I hope that I can enjoy the time out and not need help. It will further boost my confidence while I am recovering from the abuse and I feel happy to be going out for once.

Dylan takes us to a cutesy little sandwich shop where the person who is serving us is really nice and friendly and let’s me take my time to make my order. She could tell that I was really nervous when looking at the board with all of the different options on it. It was just so overwhelming, I have never done this sort of thing before and I didn’t know what to do. Dylan paid for it when I finally felt like I could make a decision on what I wanted. The lady told us she would bring our order to us when it was done. He finds a really cosy spot, not so hidden that the lady wouldn’t be able to find us but tucked away enough to make me relaxed if a load of people we to come in for their food. “This is nice, might ask the guys to come next time we have a break,” Dylan says.

I want to spend more time with the guys outside of the home, that way we could avoid Aron because he wouldn’t know where we are. “One day, we will be able to live a normal live and not have to worry about Aron,” I tell Dylan. He nods, we all hate watching our backs for Aron to be round the corner. I have not been the only target of his violence. He’s punched all of us in the face at least one lately. “Yeah, you’ve also got to give me a list of places you’ve never been to, so I can take you there,” Dylan says. I smile at him, I’ll get help from George and the others because they will know. It will be good for me to experience life and new places. They could be good date ideas even if we don’t do them all in the next four years I am in high school.

The lady brought our lunch over and smile. She said if we needed anything then to just let her know. She is super kind, definitely have to come back here again sometime. “Enjoy Danny,” Dylan tells me, and we tap our drinks together before laughing. It was so good, even better than the lunches at the home. Then again it’s not going to be a five star meal at the Lost Boys home. “That was good Dylan,” I tell him, we had only just finished, and we were going to enjoy our drinks before leaving to go and explore elsewhere. “I’m glad you enjoyed it, you know George took me here last summer when I was feeling down, and I have been desperate to take you here since I heard you were arriving here,” Dylan tells me.

Did I mention that I have found the sweetest man on the planet? We may be about four years away from being adults, but I feel like nothing is going to change between now and then. “Yeah, if you do ever feel down again then feel free to talk to me about it and we can figure something out between us. Must thank George for suggesting this place,” I tell Dylan. I hate that he ever felt down, but I can understand why he would feel that way. Lost boys home is not exactly all sunshine and joy if I am being honest. You knew if you were there it was because either both your parents were dead and there was no family willing to take you in and then there are kids like me who had parents who are still alive but were in no fit state to look after you.

“Yeah, definitely have to thank George when we get home,” Dylan says, and I smile. Now we are going shopping for a little while. I want to get Caleb a little something to say thank you even though we aren’t leaving yet. I just feel like he deserves something for putting up with all of us and still wanting to do this job no matter how stressful it is. It could be quite hard juggling a group of boys at varying different ages and stages in life with different experiences. It’s amazing to see how he manages to stay so calm around us and not scream. I bet he does that when the doors are closes and everyone is asleep. If you went to the carers floor I bet if you listened close enough you would hear the screams of Caleb.

Dylan takes my hand as we leave the sandwich shop. We are not afraid of people making comments, we can just ignore them and live our lives the way that we want to. The lady who made our sandwiches smiled and told us goodbye and she wished that we would come again. I told them that we would definitely come back, it was an amazing lunch and I can’t wait to come here again with the others. “That was nice wasn’t it Danny?” Dylan asks, and I nod and smile. “It was amazing,” I tell him. I like the little moments where we get to do mundane things that I don’t really understand what’s normal and what isn’t because I have not been able to experience these types of things before and I actually enjoy it.

“What do you want to do next?” he asks me. I like how I get to be involved with the decisions as well. I know that anything I am not sure about I would ask Dylan for guidance. “I’d like to go and see if we can get something for Caleb. You know something to say thank you and to give him a little pick me up because he needs that too,” I tell him, just about managing to make sense in my sentence. Dylan smiles, I hope he likes my idea as well. “Yeah that would be amazing, we can really treat Caleb nicely after all he has done for us so far and I know that Aron has been causing a lot of headaches for him,” Dylan says. That is true, I thought I was the one who was causing the issues, but I know it is just me struggling to adapt to my new life.

“Yeah, I wish that we could give him a day where there were no issues. That would be a good present for him,” I tell him. Dylan nods, I bet that would be the best present anyone could give someone who works in a care home. The only person that would ruin that plan was Aron and there was no way that we could get him away for the entire day to make Caleb’s day until Aron leaves the home for good. “That would be the best present we could give Caleb when Aron finally leaves,” Dylan says, we are looking around for a nice shop where we could get something that Caleb would appreciate and maybe even find some practical use out of. Dylan knows Caleb a lot more than I do, and I can’t wait to see what happens when Caleb gets his present.

“Yeah, let’s go look for something nice for Caleb in the meantime. Then when Aron leaves we can plan with the rest of the boys to make the carers have the best day of their lives so far,” I tell him. It will be a long time before we get to actually carry out the plan, but that way we can make it the best possible. We find a craft and hobby shop and walk inside. There are so many model kits in here that we could possibly get for him. I know that Caleb is interested in these sorts of things as a downtime activity. “Oh this is perfect for Caleb, he loves model planes. It could give him something to relax with in the meantime,” Dylan says, and I agree. Now we want to try and get him one that he hasn’t got before. Then he could enjoy it more than one he would have built before.

“Yeah, let’s get him one that he might not possibly have built before too,” I tell him. Dylan chuckles as we look around to see which airplane models our amazing carer has never built before. I would laugh if we spend all of that time only to find out that he has build the planes before. “Panic not Danny, he hasn’t been collecting for too long. We have plenty of choice today,” Dylan says, in a voice which is making me laugh a lot. He just makes me crack up all the time with barely any jokes. He smiles at me as we get the plane that I mention to Dylan that Caleb talks about a lot when he was teaching me back in the early days before I was allowed to join the rest of my friends in school. “Do we bother getting this gift wrapped or nah?” he asks me as we head towards the check out.

“I’m not sure yet, I don’t think there would be much point in gift wrapping it. We can just surprise him it when he’s on his own,” Dylan says, and I agree. We can hide the gift in my backpack when we comes to pick us up we can give it to him. That would be the best time. “We can do it when he picks us up in a few hours couldn’t we?” I tell him, and he nods. I looked at the time and it is already one o’clock and we have three hours left now before Caleb comes to pick us up. I pay for the model and we are on to our next shop. I wanted to get some new clothes for myself, just so that I could chose things that I like. Don’t get me wrong, the hand-me-downs from the others have been amazing, but I want to have my own style as well and I am slowly being able to discover that with some help.

We get to a few shops where I have a few t-shirts and jeans as it gets closer to three o’clock. “Is it me or am I hungry?” Dylan asks, and I chuckle. He is usually always hungry, so I am surprised that he has not mentioned it sooner. “Let’s go get a snack and do a little bit more shopping before Caleb comes to take us home,” I tell him, feeling good that I have be able to make a good decision for us both. “That’s a good idea little bear,” he tells me, and I try not to blush like crazy. He always gets me blushing and smiling when he notices that my mood is a little on the low side. He always tries to get me confident when I doubt myself. I have done really well today, I know everyone will say it when we get back.

“Oh this chimney cake is so good Danny. Would you like to try some?” he asks me, we went to a little vendor who cooked it in front of us and we are now walking towards where we will meet Caleb shortly. “Oh go on then,” I tell him, and smile as he then breaks a piece off and feeds it to me. It really was good, and he fed me another one. To be fair on him, the chimney cake is huge, so he was more than willing to share more of it with me. I have never had something yummier in my life, so I was enjoying the new experiences with Dylan. “Dylan, this has been the best day ever. I really want to say thank you for dragging me outside,” I tell him, and he chuckles. He didn’t really have to drag me anywhere, I was more than willing to come with him.

“Well Danny, I am glad that you have had the best day ever. I am glad that dragging your cute butt outside has made you happy,” he tells me, before feeding me another chunk of cake. We sit on the little stone wall near our pick up point and I swing my legs while we wait for Caleb. I heard someone mention how cute we are together and how the young love was so nice to see. We smiled at them, I don’t think I have had someone compliment me like that without actually knowing me. Y ou’d expect people to instantly be homophobic when you clearly see to teenagers in love like this. Especially older people. “I love spending time with you Danny bear,” he tells me, I started feeding him some cake too.

“I love spending time with you as well,” I tell him, I need to come up with a nickname for Dylan, but I can’t think of any good one for him. Maybe George could help me out with it at some point. Or maybe a nickname is not really needed because we can just call each other what we feel comfortable with. Caleb showed up just a few minutes before he was supposed to and we both smile at him. I was having a good time, but I was also starting getting fed up and wanting to be back home. “Heya boys, ready to go home?” he asks, and we nod. We get into the car and Dylan hands him the gift we have been patiently waiting to give him. “Oh wow boys, you didn’t have to do this for me,” he tells us, with a smile on his face.

“We did, Danny decided that we should give you something to cheer you up since we know things are not that great at the home,” Dylan says, and I nod. He smiles at us and I know we will get a hug when we get home. “You two are so nice. Yeah things are not that great right now, but when you have been in the career as long as I have you tend to not let it get to you too badly. The gift is very much appreciated none the less,” he says, it feels good take make his day though. We know it’s the small things that make a carers day. We try and make it as easier job for him as we could possibly do despite all the issues going on between us and Aron. My night terrors have come back with a vengeance and I have been too afraid to talk about them.

I just don’t want to cause more issues than my time here has already caused. I feel like even though people tell me I am not an issue I can’t help but think that I am. “Are you okay there Danny?” Caleb asks me. We are nearly home now, and while Dylan was happily chatting about what we did I was sitting quietly watching the world go by through the window. “Yeah, I’m okay,” I tell him, looking towards him with the best smile I can manage. I don’t quite think he believes me, but he has no real evidence to suggest that I was lying to his face by saying I was fine. I am getting pretty good at letting these night terrors go undiscovered. I don’t scream when I wake up and I just calm myself down before settling down to sleep again.

“Okay, you know you can tell me if that changes right Danny? You know that it’s my job to look after you,” Caleb says, and I nod. If I felt brave enough to go and ask for help then I know Caleb would not shout at me for it. “Yeah, I will Caleb,” I tell him, and I can see him smile at me through the rear view mirror. Caleb is just trying to look out for me which I appreciate a lot. Dylan is sitting next to me and I feel his hand on my shoulder. I look at him and smile. I don’t want to worry these two more than I seem to have done already. “Don’t worry Dylan, we still had a nice time,” I tell him, and he smiles. He knows I am a quiet natured person anyways. I am also kinda car sick, so I was trying to focus on anything other than that.

“I wasn’t worrying Danny. I know you feel sick as well as you being a very quiet person,” he tells me. I completely forgot to take the anti-car sickness tablets before we left which is my bad really. “Do you feel sick?” Caleb asks me, and I nod. I was biting my lip to stop myself from actually throwing up in the car. “Okay, buddy we aren’t going to be much longer. Gotta make sure that you take the anti-sickness pill next time,” Caleb says, we are now only minutes away from the house. I nod and try and stop biting my lip so much. I don’t want to make my lip bleed again, I think that if I did have a moment where I threw up with an open wound on my lip it would sting and bleed a bit. Dylan puts his hand on my back.

When we got home I did almost throw up, but I relaxed in the living room for a good half an hour and I felt better. We both heard Caleb telling Megan the other female carer about how sweet we have been with the gift that we have given him today. “Aw that’s nice of them, the boys are really kind,” we hear Megan reply. Dylan was rubbing my back still to help my nausea still while I was relaxing, and I was definitely feeling better. “How are you feeling now Danny?” Caleb asks, he brings me a cup of water as well which I was sure not to down half of it straight away. “Feeling a lot better now thanks Caleb. I almost forgot how sick I get when I am in the car and stuff,” I tell him, and he smiles. He talks to us for a little while and then gets up to deal with the many issues that happen in this hell hole.

George, Jorel and Jordon walk in and join us. I know Matt is having fun with Austin again in another room. “Hello, did you two have fun?” George asks us, and we both nod. It was a lot of fun, I have new clothes and a great memory of some time that I spent with Dylan that nothing can take that away from me. “Yeah, it was nice to have some time with Danny exploring the city,” Dylan says, and I smile. It was really fun walking around with Dylan like that. I hope the guys can show me the good parts of Los Angeles that I have never seen before. That’s basically all of the good parts, I have only been in the apartment down in Bell Gardens and then the Children’s hospital where I was recovering. After that it was from here to the school and back.

“Yeah it was really fun, and I did enjoy exploring Los Angeles with you Dylan,” I tell him. Dylan grins, I did get something for him when he was not looking properly at what I was buying as I do want to give him a little give gift to show how much I appreciate everything that he has done for me since we have first met and even when we first started dating each other. “I’m glad we had fun together Danny. I really hope we can have more dates like that in the future,” he tells me, whispering the last part to me because he didn’t want someone else to suddenly overhear us. I would love to have more dates with Dylan, especially when it gets to the spring break and we have more time to enjoy ourselves. I snuggle up with Dylan on the couch.

“Aw Danny, you’ve been a right cuddly boy haven’t you?” George teases, and I smile at him. I don’t mind the teasing a little bit. He’s almost like a father figure in my life, he really looks of for me like he does with everyone else. “Yeah, and there isn’t anything wrong with that,” I tell him, and he chuckles. He knows there is nothing wrong with that. He was the one to encourage me to cuddle up with the others and himself if I felt like I needed too. Especially when I have been struggling with the night terrors which I am still refusing to tell them about. I just don’t want to be the burden to them after everything that happened to me already here. I just feel like I am problem than what it’s worth most of the time.

I stifle a yawn and snuggle into Dylan and he rubs my back. Luckily they don’t seem to notice that I am really tired. They probably expect me to be a little over stimulated from going around all those different places for the first time. “Where did you two have lunch?” George asks, and Dylan tells him where we went. “Oh nice did you enjoy that then Danny?” and I nod. It was a good lunch to be fair. “Yeah we said that it would be cool to have a day out where we all get to go together,” I tell him. He smiles, he’s glad that I liked my experience there with Dylan. I have really enjoyed today, but now the exhaustion is slowly starting to hit me. “That would be nice Danny, maybe like a spring break trip or something,” George says.

If I can get through dinner and the rest of the evening then I should be fine really. I’ll try go to bed at a decent time and see where I go from there. If I have a nightmare or night terror tonight then I will just deal with it the way that I have been doing so far as that seems to work really well. As long as I don’t get caught I should be fine. I just really do not like worrying people, like even back in the car I didn’t want to worry them. I had finally finished the water and I felt better than I did in the car. I lazily passed the glass to George to put down on the table until we go for dinner where I take the glass to be cleaned. “Did you get sick in the car again Danny?” Jorel asks, and I nod. I will definitely take the anti-sickness tablet next time I leave the house.

“It’s not pleasant but you’ll feel better in a little while unless you feel better already,” he tells me, and I nod. There is a little bit of nausea lingering, but it is no where near as bad as it was before. “Yeah I feel a lot better now and when I eat in a little while then it help me a little more,” I tell him. We are just going to rest for a little while and then we are going to eat, then it’s up to us what we chose to do after that because it is not our weekly movie night, those are usually Friday nights and not Saturday nights. The weekends are the only time that we can have dates that we had today since we didn’t have to go to school during the day. “It was also my fault for not taking a tablet to prevent it the night before,” I add.

“That’s true, but don’t forget that Aron was being a pain in the ass all evening until we fell asleep, so there was no way that in this instance you could have taken it,” Jordon says, that was also true. Aron was bothering us all until we decided that we were going to fall asleep because we had enough of him. It was a blessing that we have not seen Aron yet today, well at least Dylan and I haven’t. He wasn’t even there at breakfast this morning which is sometimes typical during the weekend. He likes to get drunk and then sleep through most of the morning. Then we get called for dinner and we all nearly shove each other over in fun. “Feeling even better now then Danny?” Caleb asks, and I nod before handing him the glass before it gets the chance to break.

“Yep, learned my lesson for next time too,” I tell him. He shakes his head at me whilst smiling as I go and sit down to eat. I am still tired, but I know I don’t have long left before I can fall asleep and if I stay positive then maybe the night terrors will leave me alone for tonight and I can enjoy a decent night’s rest for once. George asks Caleb if we can watch a movie undisturbed in the movie room because we missed our chance last night because of Aron and he says that it is fine, and we could just go and relax as long as we go to bed at the right time. We’re gonna obey cause we do anyways, and we want to give him an easier time than what he has been through lately. I ended up falling asleep pretty quickly when we did go to bed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And that is the end of another chapter hope you enjoyed! See you next time!!


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8/10 – let's start some drama!

Also happy new year everyone! First post of 2019! I am counting down till I get to see the guys in concert.. it will be so much fun and I can meet them too!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Danny p.o.v

I am slowly building my confidence with being able to explore some of the school by myself. I can definitely go to the toilet on my own. We have a free lesson where we could go into the library if we wanted to and I definitely took that opportunity. The others know where I am should their lessons end and if I am in here because I am too into the book I was reading at the time. They know I am into reading now that I know how to read, and I can read novels now. Aron has moved out of the lost boy's home now which is good, but since he hasn't graduated yet we still see him around school. He mostly avoids us which is good. I still here people calling him a pillow fucker every now and then. I find it pretty funny that something I came up with on the spot under pressure is now sort of his legacy in the school.

I was aware that it was nearing the break time, but I was so into the book I don't know that I am going to leave on time to meet Dylan and the others. I've been too nervous to ask the librarian to borrow the book, so that I could read the book at home or something. I don't think that I would be yelled at for asking, I see so many people doing it all the time. I am just still a little too shy at the moment to ask for it. I feel Dylan sit next to me, I know it's him because he always twirls some of my hair when he sits next to me. "Hey, enjoying your book there?" he asks me, and I nod. I was still not finished but I hope that I can find this book again later and remember where my place is. "Yeah, not finished it yet though," I tell him.

"That's okay, we can go to the lady on the desk and you can ask if you can borrow it," Dylan says, confidently. He always has so much more confidence than me. We walk up to the desk and Dylan walks me through what I had to say in order to be able to borrow the book for a week. She knew that it was my first time too, so she was really nice and didn't make me feel like an idiot for not knowing what to do. I stay close to Dylan as we walk out, I saw Aron nearby and I didn't want him to start any crap even though we don't hold hands when we are in any place that Aron could know about the relationship and start bullying us for it. Once we were out of Aron's sight Dylan briefly held my hand until we found the others waiting for us at our usual place.

"Had a good morning then Danny?" George asks, and I nod. Both Dylan and I sit down on top of the picnic bench and Dylan wrapped his arms around me. "Yeah, we had a sub teacher who said that if we did all the work that was set for today then we could go to the computer room or the library for the lesson after we proved that the work was done," I tell them. They already knew I was at the library because I texted them that. Caleb gave us all phones as a gift for us behaving so well over that last few weeks he had been dealing with Aron and trying to get him removed from the home. "Borrowed his first library book today as well," Dylan mentions, the book now safely in my backpack because I was worried about it getting damaged.

"Well done Danny, now that we can build your confidence further and I can recommend you some new books to try out," George tells me, and I smile at him. I do agree that I am slowly and surely becoming more confident in myself that I can do more things. I watch as Matt and Jordon have a little play fight on the grass. I am more than happy to sit on the side-lines and watch this happen. I don't really want to take part in any play fighting because it's just not my thing. George knows that, so he is going to sit with me and let the other four people enjoy the play fighting that they are having this break time. Dylan and Jorel started and the Matt and Jordon decided to jump on the other two and make it a tag team play fight.

I need to go to the bathroom, so I excuse myself promising that I'd come back before the end of break and George was the only one who paid attention and said that he'd let the others know if they asked where I was. I managed to make it to the bathroom successfully, but I got caught by Aron on my own on the way out. He grabs me by the throat and pins me to the wall. I try my best to not let any of my emotions show. I don't want to be weak in front of him when he has been quite aggressive to me in the past and I want to try and be strong today. "From today onwards we are going to be enemies. If we ever cross baths again and you're on your own you're gonna be dead," he tells me. I am a little nervous, but I know that he's not really going to be able to do much.

I am rarely on my own anyways, I usually walk around with one of the guys because I am paranoid that my parents are going to escape jail, find out that I am in high school and come to harm me. I felt some pain in my side, Aron was not going to let me leave this encounter unharmed in any way. I ignore the pain and join the guy just before George was about to start looking for me. I used the excuse that I got lost for a moment and George believed me. I am going to keep my encounter secret as long as I possibly can. Dylan smiles when he notices that I came back from my bathroom break and hugged me gently, I was again going to ignore the pain I am in and try not to show that I am in pain to anyone else.

I think that Dylan noticed something, but he didn't comment on it. We walk to our next lesson just as the bell rings. I take a moment when bending down to pick my backpack up to see if I was bleeding anywhere because I felt something sharp hit my side. I couldn't see anything immediately which is good. "You good Danny?" Dylan asks me, sounding a little worried about me. I was taking my time to pick my backpack up to check myself for any injuries. "Yeah, I'm fine," I tell him. He smiles, and we walk over to our one shared lesson. I was a little sad that the only lesson that we have now is science. I wish we could have more lessons together, but I guess we just don't until next year probably. I miss lessons with him, but I understand that we are in classes based on our abilities.

I winced a couple of times when I stretched to reach the gas tap on the table, but luckily no one noticed that I had done it. I wasn't quite prepared to answer all the questions people were going to have. I certainly wasn't going to mention that Aron had done something to me, it wouldn't cause me any problems back in the lost boy's home, but it would give him more reason to hurt me if we cross paths again in school. I wasn't even phased by the fact that he said he was going to kill me the next time I see him. It was not the first time that someone has ever said that they were going to murder me because they didn't like me, and it wasn't going to be the last time either I am sure. Dylan helped me out a lot with the experiment and we blamed my height for the issues that I was having and how much I winced.

I am quite short and even when I lean on the stool I still have issues reaching the taps. We don't do a lot of science experiments in the class anyway because the teach said that most of the class were not to be trusted after we all had to evacuate the classroom because they nearly blew everything up. It's safe to say our class is the least trusted class in the entire school and she expected better from all of us. Well, the ones that she does trust she lets us do the experiments with less supervision than the rest of the class. I guess it is because we are more responsible than the rest of the class which is surprising for Dylan according to George. He's not very responsible apparently, I guess that changed when I arrived.

We get walk towards the canteen and I saw Aron, he scowled at me but because I was with Dylan there was nothing that he could do about it. He said the next time he saw me alone that he was going to kill me, so he can't do anything and now that he has revealed his plan to me I can make sure that for the rest of the time that I am going to make sure that I can have one of the guys with me at all times. It will be just a method to make sure that I don't get hurt again. Aron has already proved that he is willing to hurt me. I have been beaten up a few times already since I have been free from the wrath of my parents. He has been the one behind all of them, every single attack that has been him beating me because he hates me.

Lunch was uneventful for once, I sat in between Dylan and Jorel and we just ate lunch before we decided to go for a run. We basically waited five minutes before chasing each other around the field because we had nothing better to do. I flopped on the floor and curled up in a slight amount of pain and George noticed. "I'm fine, just ran too much," I tell him, he was crouching near me and checking to make sure that I was okay. I had just lied to him and I am sure that it is going to come and bite me back later on. I stretched my side a little too much and whatever Aron has done to me has been aggravated a little bit. Dylan gently hugged me when we sat back down on the bench to calm down before the last two lessons of the day.

"Just take it easy for a little while Danny," George says, just as Jordon tackles Matt to the ground again. I was happy to watch from the side again and not take part. My side still hurts, and I don't know what to do. I probably should tell one of them what happened so that they could sort it out, but I was too afraid of what Aron might do. "I will do George. I don't think that I'm in the mood for doing much anyways," I tell him. I really didn't want to do much today, just relax and hope that I didn't reveal what happened. George has been going to the gym a lot and has been working out and his muscle definition shows that. If he knew what had happened today then he would have gone on a man hunt and beaten Aron up for that.

I mean, I am not Aron's friend. I know I am his enemy now, but I still wouldn't wish the same treatment on him. Just because he keeps hurting me doesn't mean that it is right that I should do the same back. I'd just be stooping to his low level and I don't want to do that. I might be soft in the respect, but I don't see how beating Aron up is going to lead to good things for anyone. "Are you sure you're okay Danny? You look a little pale there," Jorel asks me, he always looks out for me. We definitely class our relationship as a brotherly one. I have always felt close to the guys but will Jorel it always felt like we were meant to be brothers. Nobody questions it either, they just let us get on like we are brothers and never comment on it.

"Yeah Jay, I feel fine. I am probably naturally going to be this pale at this point in my life. Don't really get much sun bathing time," I tell him. It's true, we barely get anytime in the sun and since it's only March the summer is still a few months away where it will be scorching hot and I'd probably burn and not tan. It seems to be the one time that I have never experienced yet and the one season I'd probably enjoy the most once I become used to it. "Oh yeah, you'll enjoy the summer months for sure Danny. We'll definitely go to Venice beach at least once," Jorel tells me. That sounds like fun, they've told me a lot about the beach and how fun it is to go there. I'd love to see how many beach days we'll be able to have in the summer.

Dylan walked me to my next lesson, he had asked me, and I said yes almost immediately which is something that I had stopped doing when I had become more confident. "Are you okay Danny?" he asks, and I felt desperate to tell him about the encounter I had with Aron but thought against it. "Yeah, just wanted to spend some more time with you, felt like we haven't had as much time today," I tell him, making him smile and wrap his arm around me. I also saw Aron out of the corner of my eye and he shook his head before I answered Dylan's question. I don't think it is a good idea to tell them in front of him. I think he'd definitely try and kill me quicker than he is planning on killing me already. "Aw bless you Danny, I am glad you chose to spend a little extra time with me today," he tells me.

"I love you Dylan, so of course I was going to pick you over anyone else," I tell him, whispering in his ear. I love being with Dylan during the day and we don't have to hide our love from anyone. I hated that we have to do it in school, but at the same time I understand why we have to do it because the bullying is just not worth it in my opinion. We can keep our relationship secret and still have fun. The bullying is just a way for our lives to be more miserable than they are already. We love having a stable home and everything, but it was awful to have to share a house with over 20 boys and we barely get any privacy anymore. It is not the best home to be in, but it is the only one that we have for now while we are so young.

I was starting to hurt more as we got home, but I was desperately trying to hide it from everyone. I know they care about me and I appreciate that a lot, but I didn't want to worry anyone today. The tensions are already high. I curl up into a ball on the couch and decided to try and make my side pain seem more like I was dealing with a migraine. George rubbed my back and I looked at him. "Got a headache from that last lesson again?" he asks me, and I nod. I close my eyes and hope that a nap was going to cure my headache. "Alright, I'd suggest pain meds, but they don't work so well. Let's go to the movie room and you can sleep somewhere where it is quiet and dark," George says, before gently picking me up and carrying me to the room that he told me he was taking me too.

He saw Caleb on the way who was instantly worried about why I was being carried and not walking like I should be able to. "Is he okay?" Caleb asks me and rubbed my back a little bit. "He's alright, got a migraine again so I am taking him to the movie room while it is dark and quiet," George tells him. I knew Caleb was a little concerned about me but once I nap I can go back to being fine again and pretend like nothing is wrong with me even though I know there is something wrong and I am probably going to have to come clean eventually tonight. "Alright, let me know if you two need anything and I'll make sure that no one goes into that room," Caleb tells us, and he kisses the top of my head. He keeps doing that and I am never sure what his reasoning behind it is.

"I am sure if he wasn't under the restrictions he is when it comes to adopting the kids who live here he would have adopted you by now. That is probably why he keeps kissing you on the top of the head to make himself feel like he has more of a fatherly role in your life," George says, quietly while we walk into the movie room. It does make sense, he has always made himself a solid father figure in my life and always looks out for me. "That makes sense, I know that he always cares about me and looks out for me," I tell George, before yawning. He puts me on the beanbag and starts rubbing my back a little bit to help me fall asleep. I eventually fall asleep just as Dylan quietly enters the room, I heard him whisper to George that he was here.

When I woke up I knew I was going to act like I was fine until I really had to say otherwise. I am pretty sure by now that I have been stabbed in the side. I don't know what he stabbed me with, but it hurts like a mother fucker. Dylan was on the beanbag with me playing with my hair very gently. I was trying to not show how much pain I was in but when I looked to George I saw in his face that he had seen whatever happened to my side. "Danny, what happened in school today?" he asks, it has now been fifteen minutes since I woke up and I told them my migraine has gone. I look down at my hands, trying to hold back the tears as I suddenly became afraid. I am not as strong and smart as them, so now I am doubting how I handled the situation today.

I felt Dylan reach over and squeeze my hand. "It's okay Danny, you can tell us," Dylan says, and George crouches in front of me to rub my other hand. "When I went to the bathroom I didn't get lost. Aron slammed me into the wall and said the next time that I saw him on my own that he is going to kill me, and he did something to my side," I tell them, feeling good that I had gotten it out into the open. There wasn't any immediate signs of anger from them which was good, but I was still afraid. Dylan kissed the side of my head, I guess he doesn't hate me then. "Oh Danny, don't worry. No one is going to get mad at you for hiding that for a while. We'll protect you in a way that will show that piece of shit that he doesn't have the upper hand on this and you'll be fine," George tells me.

I felt relieved that he is willing to protect me and is not mad at me for being so afraid to let them know that Aron was threatening to kill me. "We'll be looking after you Danny. We might need to get Caleb involved but only to get your side sorted out, because that looks nasty," Dylan tells me. I did realise that I probably need to take a trip to the ER with what is currently wrong with my side. "You'll be staying with me right?" I ask nervously, I know that Caleb will be coming because he has legal responsibility for me. "If you want one of us to stay with you then of course one of us will stay with you. I don't think both of us will be allowed to come with you, but at least one of us will be there and we will look after you when you come back," George says.

"Yeah, that makes sense," I tell him. He gets up to explain to Caleb what happened today. The migraine wasn't a total lie either. Caleb is probably going to come in here and look at the injuries on my torso before making a decision on when we are going to the ER, so I can have one wound stitched up if I need that. Dylan carries on playing with my hair while we wait. Caleb walks in with George and looks at me with a smile on his face. "Let's have a look at your side then Danny bear," he tells me, not sounding mad in the slightest. He lifts my shirt up a little bit and winces. "I'm sorry," I tell them, sniffling back some tears. Dylan rubs my shoulder then kisses my cheek, to try and comfort me while Caleb looks at my side.

"That's definitely going to need to be checked out in the ER, Dylan you're welcome to come with us or George. Don't worry about Aron, I am sure the others will protect you during school and I could mention it to the teachers if it is necessary," Caleb says, then hugs me carefully whilst rubbing my back. I felt like a man baby, I was very close to crying again and I hated it. I felt like when I had a bad day all I ever did was cry and I wanted to move away from that now. George leaves the room and comes back with a tissue for me. "If Dylan is allowed then he should be able to go in with Danny. Even though we all love him like we are his big brothers I think he needs Dylan more. We can look after him when he gets back and enjoys some late dinner," George says.

It is nearly dinner time, I fell asleep at twenty to four and woke up at twenty to five. The little ones will be eating now because it will be their bedtime at 7 and we will be having our dinner around then probably. It depends on how long it is going to take for the whole ER thing to happen. "Yeah, I'll take Dylan with me and if they won't let him in then I am going to trust Dylan to wait in the reception area," Caleb tells me. I am hoping that they will let Dylan sit in the booth with me. I feel like I am okay to walk, and we walk to the car and Dylan and I sit in the back. there are plenty of carers to look after the other children while Caleb takes me to the ER. I can't believe I have been to the ER only twice in my life within the same year too.

Then again Jorel once went three times in the space of two months. Caleb had his hand on my back while we walked into the reception area and explained what happened to me. I look very pale and she asked me if I was still bleeding. I wasn't but the wound will be sorted out soon I bet. She tells us to sit and wait and a doctor will come and see me soon. The waiting room isn't that full at this current moment, so I don't think I am going to be waiting too long. Dylan sits next to me and I rest my head on his shoulder. "Don't worry about holding my hand too tight Danny, it's not going to be a comfortable experience," Caleb tells me, it's good to know beforehand that it is not going to be pleasant, but I will feel much better when it's all over.

I smile at Caleb just as they call out my name. Caleb explains the whole thing to the doctor who asks my to take my t-shirt off and I did. You could see the blood all on the inside of the t-shirt. "Do you know what he stabbed you with Danny?" the doctor asks me, I had to shake my head because I honestly didn't know what he used. "Don't worry Danny, that's not going to affect my treatment. All I need to do is get a good look in there to see if there is anything I need to remove before disinfecting it and stitching it up. You tell Caleb at any time you feel like it is too much, and you need a break for a moment," the doctor says. I think it's nice to have the doctor explain to me what is going on and I can have a break if I need it.

It got to the part where he just cleaned the wound and I looked to Caleb and he asked the doctor to let me have a break. It was so much pain, Dylan had been playing with my hair the whole time and I was sure that I had I death like grip on Caleb's hands, so I let go and he could have a break too. The doctor gave me some morphine to make me feel less pain before he stitches my side up. I was much more relaxed when it came to be time for the stitches. I was starting to get hungry too, I am sure we have been here for like an hour or two now. "Gonna get you boys some dinner when we leave. I just got a text that we have all missed dinner," Caleb says, he has been updating the other carer, so that she can let George know who is worried.

Dylan and I ate Mc Donalds in the car on the way home. Just so that the other boys don't get angry because we have had fast food and they haven't had it for a while. Caleb is going to be keeping an eye on me and helping me with wound care for the next few weeks while it heals, and I have the stitches in. "I am proud of you Danny, you were very brave during that. You only asked for a break once even though you could have had as many as you needed," Caleb tells me as we are now minutes away from being back home. I smile at him, and we relax in the back seat. It was nice to know that I did something right today. Caleb hugs me once as we get out of the car and we walk into the house and I head straight to the living room where I knew the others were waiting for me.

George hugged me first, before Jorel and then Jordon followed by Matt. "That bastard I can't believe he did that to you," Matt tells me. All the younger ones are in bed now, so it is perfectly fine to swear. Jorel was more hurt than angry at first, he loves me like I am his baby brother and him and Aron were quite close before they all fell out with each other and that was before I arrived here. I did have a little bit of guilt as to their friendship falling apart quicker, but Jorel always tells me that it was bound to happen sooner rather than later. "Yeah, luckily whatever Danny was stabbed with only went muscle deep. The doctor said Danny could have died if Aron stabbed him any deeper because it had been so long since he was stabbed, and it could have ruptured internal organs," Dylan tells them.

I know that part was what upset Dylan the most, he is terrified of me dying. He is afraid of Aron or my parents attacking me and doing some serious damage. I sit with him, so he can wrap his arms around me to comfort himself. "Yeah, but Danny you do know you can come and tell us if Aron is bothering you. Like I said earlier we can make this all smooth so that he doesn't think that we are on to him when in fact we are. We can protect you," George tells me, I did know that. I was just too afraid of the repercussions of that and any fighting and further injuries which would happen if they decided to go after Aron. I must admit that it took me way too long to admit I was badly hurt and to get medical help. A few hours had passed.

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that I just didn't want him to hurt you guys too," I admit to them all. Dylan hugs me and kisses my cheek. I was so worried about him stabbing them worse than I was stabbed because I knew he still had whatever he used on him at the time. I think the principal of the school might have become involved because even though I decided to not press charges Aron still faces action for bringing a weapon to school and attacking another student with it. "Don't worry Danny, we get your thought process. It's not worth the risk to go after him anyways, we'll just be working closely in the background to look after you and make sure you are not on your own when we are around Aron during the day," Jorel says.

"Yeah, that prick is not worth the time or energy to do any damage to him. We just need to keep an eye on you when he is around and make sure that he doesn't get a chance to harm you again. That threat despite how weak we think he is will most likely be done if he gets the chance to put his ugly mitts on you," Jordon says. I know that is the most likely outcome, but I try not to dwell on the fact that there is another person that has now been added to the list of bastards that want to take my life. The top two people on the list being the people who created me who seem to had the fact that they did that. I am starting to become used to that and it doesn't upset me as much as it used to in the beginning.

I have had fourteen years of life where I have been told repeatedly that my existence is worthless, and I should have been put out of my misery on the day that I was born but for some reason I was kept alive for all these years. I think they had some pleasure out of harming me on a daily basis. I am sure that they are missing being able to harm me now. "Yeah, I appreciate you looking after me like this. I know it's a bit weird," I tell them. I knew the morphine was beginning to wear off a little bit, but the pain I am experiencing this far is not really that bad. Then again the morphine hasn't worn off completely just yet. The exhaustion from the day even though I did nap for an hour is also catching up with me.

"Yeah, let's forget about that prick for as long as we can. Danny is safe and quickly on the road to recovery, so we don't have to worry about it for now. Just a thing to be aware of when Danny leaves the group during the school day," George says, we always call him the leader of the group for this reason. He always has the best plans and keeps a calm level head whenever a mini disaster happens to us with school work or other things. "Good idea, there isn't much we can do in the meantime other than look after Danny and make sure that nothing else happens in the meantime. That injury had to hurt," Matt says, looking at me and I nodded. "It hurt worse when I was in the ER and he had to reopen it to clean it and make sure the thing I was stabbed with hasn't left anything behind," I tell them.

"Yeah, I can see why that would be more painful. All good now I hope?" Jordon asks me, and I nod. I still feel pretty good and I hope that translates into me being able to sleep easier tonight. I am going to sleep cuddled up to Dylan like usual now we are in the room that used to be Jordon's. I say used to be because Jordon now has Dylan and Aron's shared room so basically he has swapped with Dylan, so that I can share a bed with my boyfriend in an attempt to spend more time together even if it does involve us sleeping. Any more private time with Dylan is welcomed even though we are both only in our early teens and they say our romance is not likely to last long outside of high school. We'll prove them wrong.

I yawn more and more as the evening slowly turns to night and the others notice. We had just been watching some light television because we were the only ones in this living room. "Bedtime for the Danny bear," George says, and I willingly let him carry me up to bed. I am willing to be lazy just this once. I snuggle up to Dylan once I get changed into my pjs and close my eyes. "I love you so much Danny, don't you ever forget that," he tells me. "I love you too Dylan, I hope you never forget that," I tell him just minutes before I finally fall asleep in his arms.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And this marks 2 more chapters until this story is over! Hope you guys are enjoying this story! See you in the next chapter.


	9. Chapter 9

****_Here we are at the second to last chapter of Lost Boys. I hope you have enjoyed this book so far. If you’d like to see a sequel story let me know._ ** **

****_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_ ** **

****_Danny p.o.v – one month later_ ** **

It has been a month since Aron made his threat to me, I am fully healed from the stabbing now. The words he said to me that day make me more uncomfortable than I tell the people around me. The guys have been a great help in protecting me from Aron, there is someone with me at all times when I am in school and it seems like Aron is none the wiser. I know he is still waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike because he always growls when I walk past him with someone next to me. Even Theresa who is in my class has been with me when I have gone from class to class. She does not know what is going on though. If she was asked anything by Aron she could genuinely and truthfully say that she knows nothing.

Dylan has been just as paranoid as I have been over the whole thing. We are just waiting for the day where Aron is gonna hurt me and do some serious damage. I told them word for word what he said that day.  _"From today onwards we are going to be enemies. If we ever cross baths again and you're on your own you're gonna be dead,"_ is what he told me that day a month ago. They instantly made fun of him for saying baths instead of paths. That helped me feel a little calmer about it, we have found something that we can make fun of and make it sillier and less serious. “Danny, pay attention what is five multiplied by nine,” the teacher says, pulling me out of my thoughts. The nine times table is basically add 10 take away one. “Forty-five miss,” I tell her, managing to recover the situation.

She was still not that happy that I was not paying attention but because I had answered her question correctly there was nothing that she could really do about it. We always go over the times tables during the last ten minutes of the class to make sure that we know them all. That’s how we all know that the class is almost over, and the bell is about to ring. She doesn’t let us leave until we have all answered one question correctly. I was the last to do so because I wasn’t paying attention so right as the bell rings we are allowed to leave, and Theresa waits for me outside of the class. We have art class together, so she often comes to walk with me to it. She admitted to me that if I wasn’t with Dylan then she would have asked me to date her. She doesn’t mind me being with Dylan though.

She wants me to be happy and she wants me to settle in here. I have told her only a small amount of what I have been through when it triggered a horrible panic attack during one of the lessons we had together. We sit next to each other when we enter the classroom. The teacher never separates us even when we walk because we work hard during the lessons and get the work done on time. “Are you okay Danny? you seem a bit panicky about something,” Reese asks me, and I nod. I quickly take note of my body language and how people are going to perceive that. “I’m okay, I still get panicky sometimes because I was abused for so long,” I tell her quietly. She knows about how long it went on for, but not what happened like the guys do.

“I know and that seems to be the worst thing that could ever happen especially for as long as it did. If you get more panicky and want to take a minute to go outside and can calm down I can excuse you with the teacher,” Reese tells me. I am so glad that she is here and as supportive of me as she is without judgement. I smile at her and when the teacher looks at me I start drawing the plant pot like I was supposed to. I don’t want to be told off, not now at least when my anxiety is already at an elevated level than it is normally at. I try not to let the anxiety get to me too much. My brain is convinced that I am going to be killed by Aron and it is going to happen today sometime. I am definitely confiding in George with this so he can protect me.

George is always watching out for me and making sure that I am okay, and I didn’t have to ask him for that. It just sort of happened naturally, he always has been that protective since the day we first met each other. They see themselves as big brothers to me and considering I have had no family until I met them I accept it willingly. He’s always nearby when I am walking around school unless we decided to walk together. It was another method that he used to help me without Aron being aware since George has done that for a while. When it was the end of the day George was waiting for me outside of the art room and I hugged him. I was definitely going to confide in George about my worries with Aron hurting me.

“Are you okay Danny?” he asks, we are going to meet the others at the bus in a few minutes. I shake my head, and quickly look around to see where Aron was at. I couldn’t see him at the current moment which made me feel a little better. “What’s wrong?” George asks, keeping his voice low in case Aron was to suddenly appear. I look to George and bit my lip because of how nervous I was. George rubs my shoulder and I feel a little better. “I just have this horrible feeling that Aron is really going to hurt me today,” I tell him. He still has hold of my shoulders while we walk to the bus and he rubs my arm. I see Aron just as George was about to talk to me about my fears. He quickly and naturally made himself look like we were just walking together because we are going to the same bus.

He scowls again and growls because he could not get access to me like he wanted to. I try not to let this affect me because that would let Aron win. That is all he wants to do is to get to me and upset me since he can’t really do much damage because of how well protected I am right now. When Aron was not around George whispers to me. “He won’t get to you while I am looking after you,” he says. To be honest I did feel a bit safer knowing that George had my back like that. I never doubted it for once second, but it was nice to have that reassurance none the less. Dylan held me tightly when we got onto the bus. George texted him with my permission to say that I needed a few more hugs than usual.

I had asked George not to tell Dylan about the feeling I have been getting. I don’t want to worry him more than he already is. He does not like the fact that Aron has been actively seeking me out and trying to kill me. If I am late to meet up without notifying him that I will be late he panics but the guys reassure him enough until I show up. I cuddle up with Dylan as much as we felt safe to do so on the bus ride home. Aron is no where to be seen which is good because I know that he lives on the other side of town. This bus doesn’t even go that way, which has been the biggest blessing. I already think that school is hell enough as it is because I have to see him every damn day. It would have been fine if my life wasn’t on the line.

My parents are on trial soon. The police updated Caleb on the progress of their investigation. Caleb is the only link that they have to me as I don’t like talking about my childhood and they understand my reasonings. They said that I could testify against them if I felt confident with it, but they were not going to make me do it if I felt too afraid. Caleb was going to be there regardless, he said he wanted to represent me since I have confided in him and out of all of the adults that I have talked about I trust him the most. The impending trial has got me panicking almost as much as the death threat looming over my head. What would happen to me if the jury decide that my parents are not guilty of what they did?

I talk with the guys for a while and we all decide that it is best that I go and talk to Caleb to see if he could ease some of my fears. Caleb noticed something was off with my mood as soon as I walked through the door and asked if I would come and talk to him. “What’s wrong Danny? I have never seen you this panicky before,” he asks. We had gone to the quiet room where no one really walks in if there is a carer and a kid in there. “A couple of things,” I tell him, suddenly feeling afraid to talk which was weird since I trust him so much. “It’s okay Danny. Remember take your time and take deep breaths when needed. You’re definitely safe here,” he tells me. There are two bean bags in the room and Caleb encourages me to sit down on one.

I take a few deep breaths and then I start by telling him about my worries about Aron’s death threat. He rubs my shoulders and makes me feel better about telling my fears to him. “Aron is mostly all talk. I can put a word in with the school that I have heard Aron say something about harming you and see what they can do to help you without letting Aron know that people are on to him,” Caleb tells me, I don’t think the school will do much without making this whole thing worse, but we will see what happens. I have heard so many things from other students in passing that if we have problems to not go to the teacher about it because then nothing will get done about it or the situation will become worse.

Then I take a few more deep breaths and tell him about my fears about the trial and seeing my parents again. Caleb reassures me that I don’t have to go if when it comes to the day before the trial and I am still feeling this way. All of my fears regarding my parents are justified because of all of the trauma that is associated with them. He asked me to tell him all of the good times I have had with my parents and I could honestly come up with no answer for him. He then said that was natural considering I have been abused my whole life and that my parents are the ones making that link between them and fear because they would always hurt me. It does make a lot of sense and I was glad I had asked Caleb about this like the other guys suggested.

I go back to the guys once I have finished with my conversation with Caleb. Dylan hugs me tightly and I feel safe again. Caleb will make sure the carers do not let Aron into the home anymore. He can’t hurt me after that. The only chance he has to get me is when I am alone at school which has been rare since day one. I just have a gut feeling that one day we aren’t going to be as vigilant as we have been. It has already been a month since the day he threatened me and even though I haven’t told anyone, I know Matt and Jordon’s guards have dropped as they expect Jorel, George and Dylan to do that and not make it a full team effort. It worries me, but they are more used to Aron’s behaviour than I am there is probably stuff I don’t know about him.

“Danny, come here a sec,” Jorel says, he was on the couch out of earshot of Jordon and Matt has gone to spend some time with Austin. He asked, but we keep telling him he doesn’t need to have permission to hang out with someone else and we know he is nothing like Aron. They do have friends outside of this little friend group and we encourage them to spend time together. I walk over to Jorel and sit with him. “Don’t worry about Matt and Jordon, they mean no harm to you. I know it is worrying that their guards have dropped, but we will do our very best to look after you and protect you from the snake,” he whispers to me in case Jordon was eavesdropping on our conversation. I smile at Dylan who was worried about me, but I feel a whole lot better now.

When Jorel is done hugging me I go over to Dylan and hug him before kissing him on the cheek when he wasn’t paying attention. He looked at me and smiled, he didn’t realise that I had kissed him on the cheek. I did it again and he kissed me back and I blushed. The rest of the evening went pretty smoothly, and I can cuddle up with Dylan in bed like normal. I yawn and cuddle with Dylan on our bed. All this worrying has made me exhausted. “Don’t worry little bear. You’ll feel better when all of this is over I know it,” Dylan tells me. He understands more than I first thought about this whole situation. I am glad he is here by my side though. I get that we are only teens and we shouldn’t really worry too much, but this feels more serious than a usual playground battle.

“I know, I just want this to be over. I hate this feeling of not knowing what is going on. Both situations could last for months longer with no control of when it ends or how it ends. I overthink how the situations will end. Only one or two are happy and the rest are awful,” I tell him, being honest with him because I want to have this relationship because I want to trust the guys with my problems, so I don’t bottle them up. Dylan kisses the top of my head and I snuggle into him after I kiss back. “I understand Danny, we know Aron is capable of what he says he wants to do. You parent’s trial rests on the decision on what the jury decides on if they are guilty of hurting you or not. We believe that they will be sent down for a long time, but you can’t determine that for sure when you are so afraid of the possible outcome that that you will be walking among them. I don’t think you are overthinking little bear,” Dylan tells me.

****_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_ ** **

****_One week later – George p.o.v_ ** **

Ever get that feeling that something horrible has happened but you spend time raking your brain to try and find the answer but can’t quite figure it out? I have had that since this morning, and I can’t figure out why. My mind keeps drifting to Danny, and the death threat Aron gave him a month ago. I had last texted him half an hour ago to tell him that I was meeting him outside of class and he sent me an Okay back. Now I am outside of the classroom, waiting for him. The teacher noticed me and came out of the class while her students left. “Danny didn’t come to the lesson. No one has seen him since lunch time. I’ve let the principal know and he said Caleb’s out there searching for him,” the teacher said, and my heart dropped into my stomach.

“Okay miss, I’ll go look for Danny. If he got scared somewhere he might trust me,” I tell her, meaning no disrespect but they have known in panic attack’s he’s had in the past only a few people could calm him down. She said that she would let the teachers know I have permission to search for Danny. I am just praying to god that it wasn’t Aron. I got texts from the guys and I said I was going back to the cafeteria and making my search from there if they wanted to join me. Jorel said he was calming Dylan down who was understandably upset by the whole thing. He really loves Danny and none of this is like him. Caleb was ringing me. I am still walking to the cafeteria hoping to see Danny on my way there. I had no luck so far.

_Caleb: Hey, I’m on my way to the school. Danny couldn’t have gone far, this isn’t like him at all._

_M: I know, I am starting from where we parted ways after lunch and to where his class was. I have a gut feeling Aron was involved in all of this. I thought Matt went with him to his lesson, but his teacher said he never showed up and no one has seen him since lunch._

_Caleb: That’s not good. Especially when I know your gut feelings are usually correct. If anything has happened I want no one to blame Matt. We have all been vigilant over this past month and it is natural especially at your age to have your guard drop quicker._

_M: Yeah, wasn’t planning on that anyway. I know that even I had moments where I doubted that Danny was going to be harmed. We are in a high school so surely someone would see something. Then again no one saw Aron stab Danny a month ago either, so it is entirely possible._

_Caleb: That’s true, it was such a pain in the ass to convince that teacher that I had not put make-up on the poor kid. He’s been through hell and it’s like fate wants to keep sending him back there. He has not had a chance to recover from what he’s been through yet._

_M: Yeah, but he has the five of us to look after him through thick and thin. We’d probably die for that kid if it came to it. He’ll get through this_

_Caleb: Yeah, I’m at the school now. I’ll see you later._

_M: Yeah, see you- oh my fucking god._

_Caleb: Stay where you are I am on my way._

My phone drops to the floor. I didn’t care if the screen smashed. I had found Danny, and I really wished that I walked him back to class now. It seems like he was grabbed and dragged into this empty classroom no one uses anymore. Aron has beaten and stabbed the kid multiple times and I wasn’t even sure if he was breathing. I crouch down and put pressure on the biggest wound I could see. I need the bleeding to stop, Danny has to live. “It’s gonna be okay Danny, I’ll get help now. Caleb is gonna be here soon,” I tell him, aware that he might not even be listening to me and unconscious. His head moves slightly, and I hear him whimper in the pain he’s in. “Stay still buddy, the ambulance is coming,” Caleb says.

I was never more grateful for him to appear in my life. He helped put pressure on another wound with one hand while calling the principal with the other to help him know where we are so he could direct the paramedics here when they arrive. Caleb touches Danny’s cheek ever so gently and I see frightened eyes, much like when he first arrived or has just come out of a horrible flashback. “George and I are here Danny. Everything is going to be fine. That bastard won’t hurt you again, I will make sure of it myself,” Caleb says. As the wound I was putting pressure on was Danny’s right arm I moved a hand down until I was holding Danny’s hand. Just to let him know I was there because I had suddenly lost the ability to speak.

I feel Danny weakly squeeze my hand back, I knew he was trying to hold on, but he was probably going to pass out from blood loss. He did just as the paramedics and the principal arrived. He sent everyone else home. The police have been called and they were looking for Aron who was conveniently missing from lesson too. They quickly worked to stabilise Danny and then put him on the stretcher letting me and Caleb follow. Caleb told me to go in the ambulance and he would follow in the car. We know there is a long wait ahead of us. They won’t let us see Danny when we get there until they sort out his injuries. Caleb also has the difficult task of letting the guys know, they already suspect something because we have all been quickly dismissed from school due to an incident.

I get why they have closed the school. They need to turn one of the classrooms into a crime scene and it doesn’t need one of Aron’s mates trying to tamper with the evidence. They had already found the knife he had used. I had taken hold of Danny’s hand again, the left one this time. I felt a hand on my shoulder, and it was the paramedic who is monitoring Danny’s condition and applying treatments as needed. “Don’t worry, your friend is going to pull through. From the looks of things he was found ten minutes after the attack which gives us a better chance,” he tells me, and I can’t feel the energy to smile. I just wished this never had happened. I decided to explain that the guy we think did it had threatened Danny a month ago and we had brought it up, but nothing was done.

“George don’t blame yourself for this. You and your friends have done all possible to protect Danny and it shows. He’s not gonna be mad at you guys, if anything he’s going to be grateful that you all did so much. He might even remember you being there for him before he passed out,” the paramedic says. He has made me feel a little better, I guess he has dealt with similar situations before. I can’t wait for the moment where we are all back home, part of this seems surreal to me. It’s like my brain can’t handle this. I can vaguely hear the paramedic trying to get me to take some deep breaths myself. He said something about the scene I saw sending me into shock which is common for this kind of assault.

I was slowly calming down five minutes later, and the paramedic had a cup of water for me. I took it and apologised as I took a sip. “Don’t worry about it George, I have had people pass out from shock at what happened to their friends before now. It’s more common than you think and nothing to be embarrassed about. What you have seen has probably been the most violent thing you’ve seen so far right?” he asks, and I nod my head. It was honestly the worst. I couldn’t update the guys, my phone needs repairing after I dropped it. “Part of me wishes I had never seen it, but another part of me says Danny would have died if I didn’t go looking,” I tell him. I know paramedics aren’t counsellors, but he was talking to me about it and I was just talking back and trying to make sense of what happened in my head.

****_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_ ** **

****_3 weeks later – Danny p.o.v_ ** **

Oh god, I remember this feeling. The feeling of not understanding what is going on around you, but at the same time I know that I am somewhere. I try and thing of the last thing I can remember but everything is so damn fuzzy in my head. I heard George, and I think Caleb? We were in a building, a room of some kind but my brain is not letting me remember where I was. “He’s not going to be fully recovered yet. He might not move much and when the tube comes out he might not even talk for a few days. We can’t tell at this stage how bad the brain damage is,” someone says, I don’t know who too. They are talking about me though, that much I can work out. I will be happy when this fucking feeling goes.

“He is slowly coming round from our sedation so just take things easy with him,” the voice says, that has got to be a doctor or medical professional of some kind. I just wish my brain wasn’t so slow at trying to connect things together. “Okay, thank you doctor. I’ll tell the boys when they come to visit. I think they would be happy just seeing him awake at this point and we can work with you guys on getting Danny well enough to leave in the next few weeks,” Caleb says, I finally recognised his voice and man did that make me feel safer. I heard the doctor chuckle, I must have done something that amused him. “You’re welcome, I think Danny’s waking up now. His heart rate raised a little bit about five minutes ago but when you spoke just then it went right back to how it should be,” the doctor says.

I heard footsteps away from the room and then I felt a hand hold mine. “It’s gonna be just fine Danny. Take your time,” Caleb says, it makes me want to open my eyes, but they feel so heavy. I remember Caleb saying something similar to his first sentence to me back in the school. Caleb keeps saying calming things to me until I can finally open my eyes to look at him. It took me a minute to adjust to the light, but I looked at Caleb. He smiles at me and since they haven’t taken the breathing tube out, yet I can smile back, but he knows I am awake and it’s not a phase of the coma. I’m trying to take all of this in, but it was so damn hard. “Do you think you could squeeze my hand Danny?” Caleb asks me.

It takes me a couple of minutes to figure out how to move my arms again but eventually I manage to squeeze his hand. It felt so good and he smiled at me again. The hand I was not squeezing moved into my hair and I felt comfortable here. “The boys are coming after school. They’ve been here pretty much every day for the last three weeks to come be with you,” Caleb says, gently breaking it to me that I have been comatose for a long time. It wasn’t as bad as I was thinking originally when Aron knocked Matt over the head and him out cold then dragged me away. I am assuming one of his mates took Matt somewhere. I thought I was dead honestly when I was laying in that classroom bleeding. Then George came and I felt like I had a chance at making it then.

I fell asleep and a little while later I woke up to the voices of the guys and my ventilator tubes had been removed. I tried to speak to them, let them know I was okay, but I couldn’t yet. It was like the message to say Dylan’s name had left my brain but was not reaching the other parts needed. “Hey babe, don’t worry if you can’t talk yet,” Dylan tells me. I think my lips formed the name, but the vocal chords didn’t push the sound out. I smiled at him, at least I could do that much. The guys knew I was awake but let me have this moment with Dylan. He kisses me gently on the lips and I surprised him by being able to kiss him back. The others all hugged me gently and I could just about hug them all back even though I was still kinda tired.

“Glad to have you awake Danny. We’ll support you through this I promise,” George says, and I smile at him. I can move my body around a little more but that is as far as it goes right now. Jorel helps me drink some water as I was cleared by doctors to have a drink. I think Dylan can join me in bed, I am not sure what the restrictions are though. This is only the second time in my life that I have been hospitalised and the first time I had no one I could really rely on for visitors other than Tommy. Speaking of Tommy I look over to the doorway to see him standing there. “Hey Danny, never thought I’d see you again here,” he says, and I let him come in. I did miss him, he was the first person I ever felt that I could trust.

I couldn’t talk, but I could wave to him. He decided to tell the guys of how he first met me after George explained that I have only woken up today and they said it might be a while before I can talk after the head injury my attacker gave me. Matt was here and so was Jordon and Matt looked guilty as Tommy was filled in on the events of three weeks ago. It kinda made me wish I could talk as I looked to Matt. None of this was his fault, it was Aron’s. “I think Danny wants you to not blame yourself Mattie. He knows what happened to the two of you and no hard feelings are there,” Dylan says, and I nod to show that I agreed with Dylan who I was so grateful for. Matt steps closer to the bed and I pat some space for him to sit down.

“But I let him get put in this in the first place. We’d all be happy at home if it wasn’t for me letting my guard down,” Matt says, and I shake my head. I could not explain what was going through my head though which frustrated me. “Let’s see if I can get you a whiteboard and pen Danny. You have a lot to talk about it seems,” Tommy says, and I was grateful for him being here. I don’t even know if I would be capable of writing, but Dylan could do it for me to check what my thoughts are. Tommy quickly returns and I try and write something. I could do it, but it was very slow, and it took them a minute to read my writing because of how messy it was. I was very impressed that I could do that though after being in a coma for three weeks.

_Matt, Aron is a lot more cunning than we give him credit for. Truth was there when he jumped us both so we would have never stood a chance. It could be a lot worse.. I could be a vegetable right now._

I show Matt what I wrote, and he read it out loud just to confirm he could read my messy writing. “That’s true, I didn’t see Truth until it was too late. Damn you’re good at making people feel better,” Matt tells me, and I smile. I was glad I could make him feel better. The guilt he must have had for the last three weeks has been really bad by the sounds of it. They talked a little longer, with me contributing on the whiteboard whenever possible. Tommy left after an hour because he has patients to see. It was nice to see him again. Then Caleb came to get the boys so they can go home and go to sleep because it’s starting to get late and they have school in the morning. “I’ll come back in a little bit Danny, I know you don’t want to be lonely tonight,” Caleb says.

He kept his promise like I knew he would. I was not alone an hour later, he came back and settles in the bed next to mine which was there for them to sleep in if they wanted. He said if I needed him during the night he would be right there, I was so tired from trying to write so much. It might have been a little too soon for me to be doing stuff like that. I yawn and try and make myself as comfortable as possible. “Goodnight Danny,” Caleb tells me, and I suddenly remembered the sign for goodnight and managed to do it. I cover myself with the blanket as best as I can and close my eyes. I was not going to have issues falling asleep that is for sure.

****_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_ ** **

****_And that is the end of another chapter I hope you enjoyed! See ya all next time!_ ** **


	10. Chapter 10

****_Welcome to the last chapter! I hope you enjoyed this story._ ** **

****_Like I said last chapter if there is a sequel story you want to see then let me know_ ** **

****_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_ ** **

****_Dylan p.o.v_ ** **

I stare at the staples on Danny’s head while he sleeps by my side. Danny hates this new scar addition to his body. He hates all of his scars, but this one is quickly becoming the first one on his list of things about his body that he hates. Today he is getting the staples removed and some physio sessions to help him learn to walk again. I like watching Danny sleep against me now, I was so worried when he was in the coma and I couldn’t comfort him. Even when he was awake in the hospital I was not really allowed to hug him like I wanted to. Like there have been times where Danny has had a bad memories and he has cried for comfort from them and the doctors around him wouldn’t let us. It has had a deep effect on his mental health as he has been recovering.

He’s had more nightmares and flashbacks which he has had no control or comfort from until he left the hospital last week. They wanted him to go to a rehab hospital, as that is what the usual thing for someone who has had a severe brain injury to do as their next step. It was better for Danny to just come straight back here, we could tell he had enough of being in a hospital now and he was not about to let himself get transferred to another one. He is almost well enough to go back to school as he has recovered from his injuries for the most part. They just want him walking unassisted first. Danny’s stressed at the moment, his parents are on trial for what they have done for him this week and it’s panicking him a bit.

I am sure the jury will reach a guilty verdict though, with all the evidence stacked against the parents it is hard not to come to that conclusion. Caleb is going on Danny’s behalf and keeping the younger male updated. Later this week the jury will make their decision, they just need to hear both sides of the argument first. I think it is two days for each side because of how big the case actually is. Then the Friday is when the jury gets to go and make the decision to declare the parents not guilty or guilty. We could tell this was having a huge impact on Danny’s mental health. Caleb told me that there was no way that they could postpone the trial anymore. We would have to get Danny through this as the little family we have made for ourselves.

“Today’s gonna be tough for him isn’t it?” George asks when he walks in, it is Tuesday morning and we don’t have school this week. “It is, I wanna try help him not focus on the fact that it is day two of the trial today. Danny is walking for the first time today hopefully so I wanna focus more on that than the other stuff,” I tell him, feeling like I can trust George to help me come up with a plan and not let Danny onto it because he would not want us to change our day for him. He is fiercely independent which is both a blessing and a curse for us. The curse part is that Danny does not like being taken care of after he thinks it is not necessary for it to continue any longer. He is getting to that point now if I am being honest.

I guess his parents have something to do with it because he has to look after himself more than a child should. “Yeah, we can make it a bit inconspicuous. I know Danny is nervous about having his staples out today and then he is having physio. I am sure we can convince Caleb to give us permission to take Danny to that frozen yogurt place to treat Danny. Caleb wouldn’t disagree because it is a way to cheer Danny up. We know that Caleb is worried about the little dude because of what is going on,” George explains, it was fair enough. Caleb is still around so we can ask him quietly without Danny hearing him. I kiss Danny on the top of his head and the little bear smiles at me in his sleep. I was worried that I woke him up, but we didn’t.

Danny did wake up ten minutes later though. George had gone to talk to Caleb about our plans for after the appointments Danny has today. “Morning sweet bear,” I tell him. He smiles at me and I kiss him on the cheeks. He keeps smiling and then kisses me on the lips. “Morning Dylan,” he tells me, and I knew that he was a little too sleepy to come up with a nickname for me right at this moment. I am not really a guy who cares all that much about nicknames though. I give them to Danny so that he can experience some of the things he missed out on. I know he never really had loving nicknames while he was growing up until we showed up in his life. Now he has to learn how to be a teen like the rest of us.

“How are you feeling this morning Danny?” I ask him, hoping to take the conversation away from the trial if possible. He sighs and I hug him tightly. “The doctor appointments will end soon right?” he asks, sounding hopeful. I was glad that he decided to not mention the trial just yet. “Yeah, as soon as you can walk unassisted, they will stop until six months has passed,” I tell him, not wanting to sugar coat it. He needs to know the truth about what happens after an injury. The six months will only be a check up to see how he is doing. George walks in and scoops Danny up which makes him laugh. “Morning George,” Danny says, with a huge smile. I am happy now that I know that Danny is happy. I don’t like a sad Danny.

Danny’s sobs are hard to listen to now, they are filled with so much heartbreak. “Morning Danny, we will have a good day today I promise,” George tells him. We can have frozen yogurt after the appointments. I am not sure when we will tell Danny that though. He spins Danny around again to make him laugh more. “Okay, I am holding you to that George,” Danny says. Caleb is only allowed to take Danny to the appointments, and he can only stay for the staple removal because we know Danny will not like that one bit. Danny hates doctors who have to do things to him, one doctor he had was not the nicest. “You can hold me to that Danny, I don’t mind,” George tells him. I wanna keep Danny’s happiness and confidence up.

The longer Danny is happy the better. I know now that Danny is going to cry when they take the staples out just out of fear. Caleb smiled when George carried Danny down into the dining room so we could all have breakfast. “Morning Danny, I am going to take you to both appointments, but I can only stay for one. Then I have given the three of you, permission to go have some fun for a while and I will come get you,” he tells us. Danny’s eyes lit up and I smiled. George was right, today is going to be a good day. It might have a rough start due to the appointments which Danny is not fond of, but it will be all fine afterwards. Danny won’t be very upset for long though and Caleb will be okay comforting Danny.

****_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_ ** **

****_Danny p.o.v_ ** **

I don’t want to go in the car, I really don’t want to go into the car. Caleb notices and puts his hand on my back. “I know Danny, I know you don’t want to get into the car. You just have to be with doctors for two hours and that is it for a while then,” Caleb says, I have been practising learning how to walk at home, but the doctors need to see it to tick it off their list. They just want to make sure I am recovering properly. “I don’t wanna go though. Why can’t they take your word on me walking?” I ask him. I wasn’t too fussed about the staples even though I am very nervous about it. I will be glad to have the metal out of my head apart from the metal plating which has now become my skull. “I wish Danny. This way we will make sure they won’t bother us to make an appointment,” Caleb tells me.

“Okay Caleb, I guess I don’t really have a choice,” I tell him, and he hugs me. I reluctantly climb into the car and then Dylan followed and shortly after George did too. “Don’t worry Danny. It’s not all doom and gloom today. We can go try out the frozen yogurt place you asked about,” George says. I smile at them and then Dylan kisses me on the top of my head. I am really happy to go to the frozen yogurt place now. I think it will be good for me to go through the appointments like the brave man I should be and then treat myself afterwards. “It will be okay Danny. Dylan and George might be able to be in the room with you. No promises though they might just want me,” Caleb explains. I get it though.

He was right, they only allowed him in the room. They have stopped George and Dylan from coming in. They say it is because of my anxiety and it is best for that if there are as few people in the room as possible. That was why there are only 4 people in here at the moment. Me and Caleb, and the doctor and the nurse who will be taking my staples out today. Then we are going to the next department for physio appointment. “Danny if you ever feel like you are too anxious at any point and you would like to stop just let me, the nurse or Caleb know and we will stop until you feel like you can carry on,” he tells me. Which is something I appreciate a lot; no doctor has done this for me before really. It’s nice to know that they are looking out for me like that.

I was brave and managed to get half of the staples out before I needed to stop for a moment. It wasn’t that painful, it was uncomfortable, and I felt a little claustrophobic. “Well done Danny, keep taking deep breaths buddy. We can take five and carry on only when you are ready for it,” the doctor says, which encourages me somewhat. I take a five minute break and then I feel like I am ready to have the rest of the staples removed. “Well done Danny, all finished now,” he says, and I smile. It feels a little weird to not have the staples in anymore, but I am happy now that they are gone. I knew Caleb was proud before we even left the room. I am glad that I am not making anyone angry today, that is what I want.

George and Dylan both give me hugs when I walk out of the room with some assistance. I am getting there slowly, I just need to prove it to the physiotherapist that there is not much point in me having sessions with them because of how well I am doing at the moment. “Right off to physio then you three can enjoy being teenagers out and about. All I ask of you is to be respectful of those around you and try not to cause trouble,” Caleb says as we walk to the next appointment. I know we are all gonna behave, we appreciate the chances that he is giving us. Not many boys in the home are trusted to go out on their own like this. “Danny and I will make sure that Dylan behaves don’t worry Caleb,” George says with a wink.

We know Dylan isn’t really going to start any trouble, he will be more interested in keeping an eye on me and making sure I am both comfortable and safe. One fear I have is that my parents will break out because they are not in a maximum security prison while they are attending court. They are just in holding cells there. They will not be happy that they can’t torment me from the docks or get to me in the same ways they are used to. I hope they rot in prison I really do. Soon we are at the appointment and I don’t feel as nervous as I was last night. The doctor I just saw was really nice, so maybe the physiotherapist will be just as nice to me. Caleb is going to be there for definite. I know that one for sure.

It turns out she let George and Dylan come in the room too and let them show her that I could be assisted around if I was struggling and that I was going to be okay without extra support for now. Caleb promised that he would call and make an appointment if he felt that it was too difficult for me with walking. After that Caleb went off to go to court and we headed to the frozen yogurt place. Caleb was much happier about how the trial was going when he came back. I hope he is right about his predictions for the outcome of the case. I am glad that he is feeling more confident about the court case now. If he has faith, then it gives me hope that justice will be done for me even though I am not going to celebrate until Caleb comes home and says they are in prison for life.

****_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_ ** **

****_2017 – Danny p.o.v_ ** **

“I knew Matt wasn’t really serious about being in the band,” Jordon says, a lot of things have happened since we were in high school. My parents were locked up for life without parole for years of neglect and abuse against me. Aron got a pretty high sentence for attempted murder. Then I went with some guys I met and was in Lorene Drive for a few years before joining the others in Hollywood Undead. They were so happy. In June this year Matt left the band after being with us for 13 years and he moved to Las Vegas. “Yeah, but at least we did four albums with him. Being known only as the drummer when the rest of us do vocals must have been tough. At least now he can make music with full control,” I tell him.

I am laying on the couch, at our house snuggled up next to Dylan. Now that Five is out we don’t have to worry about pushing any new music out for a little while. “Anyway, we should leave the couple alone for the day. It is their first wedding anniversary after all,” George says, smiling at me. I was so happy the day Dylan pulled me up to the front of the stage 3 years ago and asked me to marry him in front of all our fans that were there. Then last year we got married. Dylan planned the entire thing and would not let me know a single detail. It was the best wedding and I was so amazed that Dylan could plan the whole thing so well. “It’s okay guys, the only thing I have planned for Danny and I is a little date night. We can all chill in between now and then,” Dylan tells us.

I don’t know what Dylan has planned, but I am very happy that we are going to have a little date which is all I really want. I don’t want a huge expensive date or anything like that. Even a date at home in the movie room would make me the happiest man on earth. I reach up and kiss Dylan on the chin because his cheek and lips were a little too far me to reach right now. “I love you too Danny,” he tells me, and he kisses me on the lips, and I kiss him again. I am so happy that Dylan is still here, we have been through so much over our high school time and after. I was so happy when Caleb walked in that day the trial ended and he said that it was a guilty verdict and they were getting life without parole. It is what they deserve for what they have done to me.

“What about a movie day and then a date night?” I suggest. I wanted to keep the topic away from Matt a little bit because there have been some minor disagreements between us and him over the last few years and I don’t want it to turn out like it did with Aron when we were back in high school. I have the diaries reminding me of the hurt and anger they went through when we were in the lost boys’ home. I keep all the old diaries in a box in the attic so that I don’t distract myself with the thoughts and memories of those times. Even though I knew I had the guys back then, my teenage years are still some of the toughest of my life. Everything huge seemed to happen the year I turned 14.

I was lucky to graduate high school, if I was not taken from my home when I was then I knew for a fact that I would not have lived to make it to my 15th birthday let alone my 18th. The police kept finding notes during the trial of how they wanted to kill me, so they decided to use that as further evidence that the sentence they were given for their crimes was going to be life without the possibility of parole. I often wondered what it would have been like to have parents that were actually nice and really cared about me. The day before I turned eighteen Caleb was finally allowed to adopt me as his son. I kept the surname Murillo though, but on my wedding day I took Alvarez.

I want no memories of my past life; the Murillo family name was tarnished by what my parents did. “What are you thinking about bear?” Dylan asks me. While I was thinking they decided to carry out the movie day and they had already started it. “Nothing in particular, why?” I ask, trying to make Dylan calm. He worries about me a lot; I suppose you would when you are the older one in the relationship. Having said that though, most people assume I am the older one. “Just curious, you were quite deep in thought there. George asked if you wanted cookies while we watch the movie,” Dylan says, and George was standing there with the cookies. I did feel a little bit embarrassed now.

“It’s okay Danny, you can use your noggin to think if you want. I knew the answer was going to be yes anyways,” George said, after he asked again, and I nodded my head straight away. Jorel had some vegan gummies he had found when he went shopping the other day. “Dan was probably thinking about new song ideas,” Jorel says, and I smile at him. I don’t want them to know that the memories from our early teens still weighs heavily on my mind at times. I think they have assumed I have completely moved on and forgotten about the part of our past. That part of my past which makes me stand out so much further compared to them. I stick out like a sore thumb compared with these guys.

I am always going to be the one with the broken past, the bad family and near-death experiences. I know the others have been left by their parents or their parents have died but they were loved by the people who helped bring them into this world. I am the one who is hated by my parents and will always be that man who was a broken child. I try to focus on this less when Dylan kisses me on the cheek again. I look at Dylan and smile, before kissing him on the cheek back. He seems to be happy, it is our first wedding anniversary after all. I can’t believe my mind is deciding to let me dwell on all of the awful stuff today. I have been married to the love of my life for a year now and I should focus on that.

“Dan, come with me a sec,” George says, he has been watching me from a distance. I think it might be okay to talk to him about what has been going on with me. I follow him out of the room, and he takes my hands. I know Dylan will be worried because I left the room, but I will be back soon enough. “What’s on your mind Danny? You don’t have to tell me, but it might help,” George tells me. I know he means well. I am just worried that someone is going to call me weak for still suffering from this. I sigh, I know that I need to tell someone about this. It is hard to deal with alone, there is no use sugar coating it. George has kinda been a father figure to me after he had Ava with his wife Asia. He’s always been the one who understands me better.

“It’s just me being stupid again. I am letting what happened to me as a child and what happened the first year I met you guys get to me again,” I tell him, managing to summarise what was going on in less words than I originally thought. George wrapped his arms around me, and I just relaxed. “That’s not stupid Danny. You have been through fifteen years of hell and even though you have had more years without that hell it has a really long lasting effect on your mental health. It’s gonna be with you for a long time but you have been doing so well and I am glad that you have told me about it,” George tells me, and I smile. He’s right, when I went to the doctors about it, they told me I have PTSD and that is most likely going to have to live with that for the rest of my life.

“I’m not stupid?” I ask him, I am not sure why, but my voice had gone to just above a whisper. I felt George tighten on me slightly and I rest my head on his chest because I am too short to reach his shoulder. “You are not stupid Danny. PTSD is nothing to laugh about, it takes a lot of care and support to make sure that you get through each day. Tonight you are going to focus on the good memories like the fact that you and Dylan have been married for a year and it’s going to be more than that,” George tells me. I smile at him again. I am going to focus on the date later tonight and we are going to have a good night even though I have no idea what he has planned for us both. I have my gift that I am going to give him later. I don’t him to think that I have forgotten when I haven’t. We have said happy anniversary to each other and made those sappy Instagram posts.

Dylan hugged me tightly when George and I walked back into the room. George told him some cover story as to why he wanted to talk to me. Dylan believed it and I saw out of the corner of my eye that Jorel didn’t, I sent him a quick message about it and that we didn’t want Dylan to worry today. I look at him while he reads my message and he nods to show he understands. “Anyway Dylan, what do you have planned for Danny tonight?” Jordon asks, and I look at Dylan. I am quite curious to know what is going to happen tonight, but something tells me that Dylan will want to keep it a secret from me. “I’m not telling you guys. It’s gonna be a surprise,” he says, confidently. I like the thought of not knowing where I am going.

“I like that idea Dylan, I trust you to make a great date,” I tell him. Talking to George really helped me feel better about the memories I still have to deal with and that none of this was ever my fault. I snuggle up to Dylan to make him feel better because even though he seems to have believed the cover story that George has given him he might not actually believe it because you don’t know what thoughts are going through his head. “Glad you trust me Danny,” he tells me, and I smile at him again. “Of course I trust you Dylan, we would not have been together since I was fourteen or married you last year if I didn’t,” I tell him, and he laughs at me. He can be really silly at times and I love that about him.

“I know bear, it has been the best time of my life being with you. I couldn’t imagine being without you,” he tells me, and I smile. I always feel better after talking to Dylan. I have felt a bit suicidal at times and he has always been there to reassure me that my life is worth living even if I have not told him specifically that I have been feeling that way. In fact I am pretty sure that I have not told Dylan at any point that I have felt suicidal. “I love you Dylan,” I tell him, and we both kiss each other on the lips at the same time. “I love you too Danny,” he tells me, and I heard Jordon fake gag at our cuteness and our relationship. I know that he is only being silly, he is really supportive about us really. He was one of the first ones to ask me when I was going to date Dylan.

“What outfit do you want me to wear?” I ask him, I am only asking so that I can plan my outfit, even though I know it might reveal what kind of date we are going to be having tonight. “Smart and casual like usual Danny,” he tells me, and I smile. That won’t spoil anything about the date since it is always how we dress. I have the right outfit in mind too, the outfit I wore on our first date after we left the boy’s home. It makes it more special to use and more of a reason to wear it for my first wedding anniversary date. I start singing Good Old-Fashioned lover boy when I leave the room to get a drink and the others joined. We love singing Queen songs especially to practice harmonies. Bohemian Rhapsody is the best one for that.

“Now I want to do a Queen cover album,” George says, when I walk back in with drinks and snacks for everyone. I want to do a Queen cover album too and I think the other three members of the band would agree with that too. “Oh that sounds like a good idea, I don’t know if the living members of the band Queen would let us do that,” Jordon says, and Jorel sticks his tongue out at Jordon. What a party pooper Jordon is. I am sure we could work an agreement out with Queen to make a cover album with their permission and some royalties fees. “Yeah Jordon, we could work with Queen to come up with a deal which will work for everyone involved,” George says. George is right, I could see this working out well for us.

We watched about three or four movies before Dylan said if we watched another one then we will be late for our date. The last thing that we want is to be late for the date to celebrate one whole year of being married. I get up so I can get changed, I don’t mind Dylan watching me because he has definitely seen this outfit before. It is not really going to surprise him when he sees me walking down the stairs wearing this like he was surprised when I walked down the aisle last year. Caleb was giving me away and I was so thankful that the man I had already considered to be a father/grandfather figure in my life would do that for me. He didn’t have to do it either, I know that he was busy with newcomers in the home at the time.

“Every time I look at you. I am taken back to how stunning I found you when I first saw you,” Dylan tells me. I have my shirt off because I was not ready yet. He wraps his arms around me and rubs my shoulders before moving down to my waist. “But I hated myself so much back then,” I tell him, being honest with him. He knows a little about how I felt back then. He kisses every part of my exposed skin. “You were a broken boy back then Danny, you had several wounds to heal for the first years that I knew you. I don’t think any less of you because of them. You know I love you and each and every one of the scars on your body,” he tells me. If he asked our daughter Scarlett when we next see her, she’ll say the same thing.

In 2008 we asked Theresa who is still a really good friend of mine if she would carry our baby for us. We knew we wanted a baby even though we were not married to each other yet. She agreed and in November 2010 Scarlett was born. We love our daughter so much and she gets to spend time with Theresa when we are on tour and want some date nights like tonight. I already sent messages to her to say that I loved her and thank you for when she sent us a message saying happy anniversary. “I love you too Dylan,” I tell him and turn around so I can hug him properly. I don’t know why, but he says the scar on my head was his favourite. Why would someone have a favourite scar one someone else?

“I still don’t get why you think my head scar is your favourite,” I tell Dylan. I get dressed in front of him but tease him a bit while I am doing so. He smiles and does the buttons on my shirt up for me, I am still not that great at doing it. “Because I think that is symbolises a rainbow. After all of the bad things happiness will come your way. Everything got better for you after you recovered, your parents are rotting in jail and Aron has gone to hell too,” Dylan tells me, again he always takes a different angle on my scars that I am being too busy hating on to consider. “God damn it,” I mutter under my breath, and he laughs. I love his laugh, I would love it if he laughed all the time. He kisses my cheek and takes my hand after I put my shoes on.

“Do you get it now Danny?” he asks me, with a laugh and I nod. I totally get it now and he was right. A lot of amazing things happened after I recovered from my brain injury. “Yeah I get it now,” I tell him, and he shouts bye to the guys who are now watching horror movies. I hold Dylan’s hand tightly as we walk to his car and then when we get out of the car to the restaurant minutes later. It was nothing fancy, but I am happy to spend any time with Dylan. The meal was great, we even got happy anniversary written onto our deserts which I wasn’t expecting. I thought they might have been a bit homophobic about it. Then Dylan told me he had another surprise we were going to just as the sun was starting to set.

We were watching the sun set by the Hollywood sign. It was a pretty sight and I was glad that I was with Dylan to experience it. “I loved our date night Dylan,” I tell him, it was getting pretty late now, and we needed to get home. “I am glad you loved it Danny. I loved every minute of it because I was with you,” he tells me. When we both got home we were pretty tired, so we ignored anyone who was still up and went straight to our room to get changed and cuddle up in bed together and fall asleep in each other’s arms like we are meant to be.

****_~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~_ ** **

****_And that is the end of lost boys. I hope you enjoyed it! Like I said before if you want a sequel let me know._ ** **


End file.
